


REAPER IV

by elzierav



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Anal Sex, Cyberpunk, Dystopia, Everyone is Badass, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, May add tags as I go along, PTSD, Plotty, Prosthetics, Qrow is part robot, Science Fiction, Smut, Swearing, Trauma, Violence, Worldbuilding, explicit content, graphic content, injuries, so many warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:40:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 47,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22526434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elzierav/pseuds/elzierav
Summary: “Only when Qrow looks straight into teal eyes does he see it - other humans look at him like they want to pick him apart and put him back together, robot part after robot part, shaping him to their own liking. Clover stares back like he wants Qrow in all of his entirety, in all his brokenness and wholeness, as he is, as he was, and as he’ll never be.”122 years after the Fall. The war was won, the enemy defeated, but soldiers’ bodies and hearts are still deeply scarred. Such that humans never have to go to war and come back traumatised again, the government has produced REAPERs, enhanced human-android hybrids whose memories of trauma are purified by the ELIXIR procedure. Qrow Branwen, the fourth REAPER, is mandated to search for a human war veteran turned anti-government vigilante, but upon meeting a mysterious girl he uncovers much more than previously thought.
Relationships: Qrow Branwen/Clover Ebi
Comments: 48
Kudos: 62





	1. Shambles

**Author's Note:**

> I was trying to write a soft fluffy AU like we all need right now, and then this happened. I don’t know what came over me. Yup, a dark and gritty, aggressively cyberpunk AU with dealing with trauma as one of its main themes. But I don't think I've ever liked anything I wrote as much as this, for some reason.  
> Read the tags for warnings. There is smut in chapter 2. Hope you like :)

“What’s the date?”

“122 years, five months, thirteen days, seven hours, six minutes, and 42.31 seconds after the Fall.”

“Who are you?”

“Qrow Branwen, half-human, half-android, REAPER, fourth of my kind, under the orders of Consul James Ironwood of Atlas.”

“Correct. I will read a series of words. For each word please reply with the first word that comes to mind.”

“Yes, Judge Hill.”

“Law?”

“Peace.”

“War?”

“Pain.”

“Suffering?”

“ELIXIR.”

“Raven?”

“Sky.”

“Bad luck?”

“Probabilities.”

“Good luck?”

“Probabilities.”

“Child?”

“Protection.”

“Birth?”

“Suffering.”

“Death?”

“Dust.”

“Dust?”

“Shower.”

“... shower?”

“Rainfall.”

Judge Hill inspects the multiple readings across holographic screens surrounding her, lilac eyes smiling benevolently at the REAPER through the various shifting displays. Different screens display his heart rate, breathing and other vital monitors, alongside videos and statistics previously collected from his sensors, images of his powerful scythe dispatching criminals with ease, blade slicing through metal and concrete as if through paper. 

“ELIXIR procedure successfully completed,” the Judge concludes. “Excellent, come see me again in two weeks, REAPER IV.”

* * *

The Shambles are a tour de force of unlikely probability, a dark tower on the brink of collapse, seemingly triumphant over the elements and the odds, even if fleetingly. Growing along the metal wires connecting Mantle to Atlas like vines around a tree trunk, slum housing had blossomed, each insalubrious building piled atop the previous amongst a mess of entangled cables. The Atlas-to-Mantle anchors are the only piece of solid steel keeping the chaotic collage of poorly designed housing together, unexpectedly withstanding the test of time. Black, sooty, mangled façades stare outward with small, dirty windows like glassy, wary eyes, only illuminated by lewd or political holographic ads flickering in bright garish colours through the darkness. 

More importantly, the Shambles are the ideal underbelly to hide pesky outlaws and dangerous criminals, which is the primary reason for Qrow’s visit. Between thin, rusty metal walls, music booms, saturated lights flashing rapidly as the ecstatic crowd cheers at the two combatant robots on the ring. Reeking of alcohol and human sweat, the audience places their bets on holographic screens projected by drones overhead, recapping the statistics of both opponents. The challenger is a black and gold mech suit on nimble wheels, its cannon fists synchronised to the yellow gauntlets of its master, a boisterous blonde colliding her fists together before rushing into battle. The reigning champion is a silvery retro suit of armour wielding an ornate broadsword and gliding with the grace of an ice skater, controlled by a white-haired woman waving her hands like a conductor through a series of circular holograms marked with a snowflake logo. 

The REAPER shrugs at the amateurish botfight, trying his best to blend into the crowd while his sensors scan restlessly, employing face recognition and extracting classified data on all present bystanders to identify the individual he’s looking for. Qrow’s target himself, a seasoned and infamous war veteran, may never be so imprudent to show his face in a public place like this, but the scythe-wielder knows who might be there and how to use that secondary target to get to his primary one. Busy analysing multiple channels of data in parallel, he doesn’t notice the bug-like shape hovering toward him to rest over his hand. 

The onslaught of pain is immediate, like a thousand acid-laced needles searing through skin and metal simultaneously. Glancing down at his arm, Qrow’s eyes are quick to recognise the bug as a soft robot, a genius invention made purely out of organic parts to evade his threat sensors. Fine tendrils escape the device, the size of his palm, to entangle to his cables and bones, attempting to burn down his firewalls and copy data from his sensors and memory. Qrow knows he can’t pry off the hacker bot, it’s already too strongly coupled to his own robotics and flesh. With a grunt, he draws his scythe and severs his compromised hand from his forearm with a flick of his wrist. 

It hurts, of course it hurts like hell, he’s not mindless, he’s human enough to feel it and his robot parts also implement pain to promote self-preservation instincts. Still, he inhales in pain between gritted teeth, knowing the ELIXIR procedure will erase the brunt of the suffering and trauma of the amputation from his memory in less than two weeks’ time, leaving only the faintest recollection like a fading scar. His crimson eyes glance upward from where the bug had fallen, searching his attacker through the mess of lights and drones at the ceiling. The crowd gasps in surprise for short instants at the vision of the colossal REAPER scythe, before turning back to the more exciting clash of fiery fists and dancing broadsword they’d paid to watch. Unbelievably, the first round ended in a draw, the powerful sword slicing off one of the yellow cannon arms while the mech’s other fist splintered its opponent’s helm. Sensors on the lookout, the half-robot identifies the individual who had thrown the bug at him, looming on an overhead balcony - a slender silhouette draped in a scarlet cape not unlike his own. 

With a single jump of his robotically enhanced legs, he pounces onto the balcony after his attacker. As soon as his feet touch the ledge, he propels himself again, scythe spinning out in circular arcs in mid-air too fast for the eye to follow. It’s a warning shot, destined to impress the enemy and gauge how they react rather than kill. To his surprise, the smaller red-caped person whips out a similar scythe and performs a spinning attack of her own, albeit less practised and steady. The curved blades intersect in a brutal collision, knocking both opponents off course. Qrow lands with agility on a cross beam supporting hanging stage lights. In turn, the stranger impales her scythe into a thick black ventilation pipe overhead, keeping herself from falling as her feet dangle over the void. 

“You’re not my target,” the REAPER murmurs under his breath as the audience stares wide-eyed overhead, delighted to watch two fights for the price of one. “I only need you to draw out someone for me. Don’t make me hurt you.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt either,” she snaps back, “I only want to know the truth. I’m the...”

“Daughter of a REAPER,” he drawls, interrupting. “Or at least you think you are, like so many kids before you. You think I’ve never seen your kind before?”

From his vantage point, he can see her more clearly now. While her cape clearly takes after Qrow’s own, her dress is reminiscent of the REAPER I’s, Summer Rose. Her scythe is clearly made from motley spare parts, fragments of damaged weapons from diverse REAPERS found and fixed in the black market. It’s quite impressive this random assemblage works at all, Qrow judges, impressive for a fangirl that is. 

She notices a display drone hovering past underfoot and retracts her weapon, elastically landing onto the flying device. With a grunt, Qrow runs after her along the maze of beams and pipes, scythe ready to strike. She may be small, but she’s fast, bouncing from drone to drone like she’s never been afraid to fall. The displays flicker at each of her steps, holograms waltzing up and down, switching off and back on. With the tip of his weapon, he tosses one of the flying projectors at her, hearing her gasp as the giant 3D image of PENNY, the most recent legendary bot fight champion, flies into her, all green skirts and sharp swords out. The hologram traverses the alleged REAPER’s daughter harmlessly as she cleaves the drone cleanly in two with her weapon, leaving it to spiral downward with a rain of sparks. However, the distraction takes long enough for Qrow to catch up to her and kick her through the nearest, dusty window. 

She lands onto a concrete roof, scythe knocked out out her hands and breath cut short. Disentangling herself from her cape, she springs back to her feet, running forward to collect her weapon. Before she can, the REAPER receptions himself by her side and kicks her scythe away, carelessly behind him. Nighttime in the Shambles is eerily quiet, with everyone indoors watching the bot fight matches. Overhead, underfoot, myriads of uneven, misshapen roofs are aligned, all crowned with parabolas, cables, and brightly lit ads. The cold, foul polluted wind whips their faces, but neither opponent takes much notice. 

“Now tell me, pipsqueak, where is the Captain who’s protecting you? Now that we’re outside and far from view, why isn’t he coming to rescue you?”

“Those were your orders? Using me to find the Captain? You don’t even care I might be your daughter?”

“No, it’s not that...”

He breaks off as she dashes forward, using the flat of his extended blade as a stepping stone to somersault over his head, cape fluttering in the wind. It’s not that he doesn’t care, he cares enough not to raise his weapon and cleave her exposed back at this very moment. But he knows he won’t remember, come the next ELIXIR procedure, anything he uncovers about his personal history, that can remind him of past trauma, that can become a liability will be erased from his memory by the treatment, and it’s no use accumulating memories that will inevitably be lost. 

She grabs her scythe as she lands, twirling it in both hands into rapid orbits to attack him from all directions, furiously, relentlessly. Groaning as he turns to face her, he drags his blade from behind his back and converts it into a shorter sword form, brandishing it in a defensive stance. He blocks, evades, sidesteps like an automaton, breaks into a flurry of one-handed parries while his robot brain scans the surroundings, computing probabilities… 

She may be fast, but she’s only human, and there’s no lasting damage she can truly inflict a REAPER. Her boot flies an inch from his face, his deflecting stump knocking her off balance under her own momentum. And that’s the moment he waited for to throw his weapon, transforming back into its scythe form in mid-air as it spins at high speed around its centre of gravity. The rotating weapon collides with the protruding base of a Shamble house overhead, bouncing off to fly straight at the girl’s abdomen - hitting her with the hilt part. The blow is enough to send her airborne, toppling off the edge of the roof. 

She would have fallen, if Qrow hadn’t rushed forward to catch her with his valid hand. His enhanced strength keeps her in place, supporting her weight over hundreds of yards of dark vacuum with a single arm. The probability computations still resuming at the back of his mind, he notices the hint of gratitude glimmering in her silver eyes - all-too familiar silver eyes. He blinks, shaking his head, and speaks in a gruff but gentle tone:

“If you have any REAPER blood in you, you’ll survive the fall.”

And he lets her go, plummeting through the darkness off the ledge. 

The faint humming of rope cutting through thin air precedes the sight of a metal hook sailing past their eyes, before a thick wire wraps around her waist, breaking her fall. The string retracts like a fishing line, drawing her back to the rooftop at the feet of a newcoming man. Tall, broad shoulders glisten in the dim moonlight, bright aqua eyes echoing the weak shimmer from his mechanical heart visible through his shirt. Of course, Qrow recognises the breathtaking eyes and the prosthetic as soon as he sees them - he knows very well that his target almost lost his life at war, stabbed through the heart from behind. He knows very well that while the man had survived only thanks to sheer luck, emergency surgery, and technological miracles. He knows very well that this man still bears scars from the war, both physical and psychological, like a badge of honour, scars festering with resentment against the government that caused the war and the REAPERs that perpetuated the government’s law. 

“Captain Clover Ebi,” Qrow grunts. “Finally. I was wondering if you’d make it in time.”

“Good evening, REAPER IV,” the Captain greets in turn. “I didn’t know servants of the government would go so far as to endanger a minor’s life as bait.”

“I knew you would come. I trusted you. You former soldiers are so predictable.”

“Says the one who’s half-robot.”

“I’m still half-human. I won’t attack either of you before you convince the girl to get to safety,” the REAPER concedes, collecting his scythe and retracting it to its storage form. “If that’s not enough for you to see that I don’t want to hurt her, I don’t know what is.”

The Captain fumbles with some trinket at his belt, extracting a small memory chip he hands the red-caped child, no doubt containing some of the information she was searching for concerning Qrow. The REAPER wonders what that may be, what could have been hacked without him knowing. Probably Judge Hill and the rest of the officials already knew, but mercifully wiped it from his mind using ELIXIR not to burden him with such anxiety-inducing facts irrelevant to his mission. 

“Ruby,  _ run _ ,” Clover calls out. 

And she nods, clasping the chip like a treasure in her balled fist before darting away down the Shambles, a blur of red through the dead of night. 

Now they’re between adults, neither Qrow nor Clover lose another second. Raising his scythe, the half-android slashes forward, slice overhead, cut down diagonally. Each blow is blocked with surgical precision by his opponent’s weapon, the hook attached to the end to form a spear of sorts, glistening with charged electricity. The scythe dances in complex flourishes and sweeping attacks around the REAPER, spinning out lethal trajectories, but every hit is countered by the Captain’s substantial strength powered by the generator at his enhanced heart. As their weapons clash, sparks travel down the shaft of Qrow’s polearm into his hand, corrupting his electronics in slight spasms. The scythe-wielder curses under his breath, Clover’s weapon clearly having been designed to disable REAPERs and other government robots. Qrow breaks the contact between their blades and evades with a backflip, leaving his opponent to stumble forward under the strength of his own attack. 

The veteran quickly regains his footing and tosses his weapon like a javelin, forcing his enemy to bend backward acrobatically to dodge. The spear embeds itself into a political billboard behind Qrow, the image of a cat-eared girl campaigning for equal rights for Augments flickering off and back on for brief seconds. Clover retracts the rope still in his hand to pull his weapon back to himself before charging at the REAPER again. This time, the half-human remains concealed in the shadows, shielding himself behind display boards and holographic ads as the former soldier powers through them, sending them to shatter in a myriad of bright lights. In one smooth slash of his scythe, he separates a nearby parabola from its stand and raises it as a shield to block Clover’s incoming spear. A light flashes in his crimson eyes, before he tilts the disc and throws it, hitting his opponent in the lower stomach and flying him several feet backwards.

The Captain steadies himself by planting his spear into the ground, admiration painted on his expression at how formidable his opponent, even while amputated of his hand, proved to be. He hesitates for a fraction of a second, perhaps at the dawning realisation that Qrow had been honest about not going after Ruby, such that holding the REAPER off isn’t of that much use. The part-android senses the hesitation, without being certain of its cause, and seizes his chance. Running with his scythe at his side, he lunges off the ground once more, spinning his blade at top speed around him through the cold air to amass momentum - enough momentum to cut tear through his enemy as if through butter when they next collide. As he revolves in mid-air, he sees Clover whip out his hook, the fishing line spiralling as if in slow motion around him before closing in…

The clash is violent, deafening, resonating deep through Qrow’s metallic chest cavity. The Captain’s rope is wrapped tightly around his body from head to foot, its lightning lacing at his skin. The remnants of his scythe are scattered around, utterly destroyed by the electric fishing line, falling, falling… Only his valid hand extends out of the string binding him, forcing him into an unstable, one-armed handstand. From his position, he only sees his hand growing numb from the effort of supporting his full weight, his fingers blinking in and out of focus as the lightning from Clover’s weapon disrupts his sensors. He closes his eyes, probability calculations quickly imprinting onto the inside of his eyelids. 

A blade fragment from his scythe tumbles past his face - and he catches it with his teeth. With a powerful turn of his neck, he sends it flying upward like a boomerang. The veteran only understands when the metal shard sections a tangle of cables overhead, letting loose a dozen wires falling straight toward Clover. Grunting under the electric shock, the Captain releases his weapon, allowing Qrow to break free and punch him in the heart with his mechanical stump. 

The impact doesn’t sound good - a sickening crack is heard as Qrow’s hurt arm splinters further, a fissure growing worryingly close to his elbow against the pale skin. Clover isn’t looking much better either, the hit having loosened some wiring at his bionical heart as he writhes in a fit of coughing against the cold surface of the rooftop. The REAPER stands staggering under throbbing pain, wishing for the ELIXIR or something that would numb his soul, take the suffering away. He’s aware that they’re both in urgent need for repairs right now, and not the kind that is easy to do alone, especially not in their state of exhaustion and injury. Therefore, it doesn’t come as a surprise when the veteran calls out for a break between two loud coughs. 

“Care for a drink, REAPER?”


	2. Heart to Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is *intense*. And sooo loooong. And boozy and smutty. Enjoy :)

Clover’s workshop is orderly, but the small space is so crowded with mismatched spare parts and other trinkets it appears messy, like a greenhouse brimming with overgrown vegetation. The veteran warily gestures to a worn sofa on which Qrow promptly collapses, while he searches for a bottle and two small glasses around the corner of a dusty shelf. The liquid poured out of the flask is clear as crystal in the semi-darkness, and the REAPER downs it immediately with a practised gesture, appreciating the strangely familiar burn down his throat. 

“You were a liquor amateur in your human life?” the Captain prompts affably, dropping down into an office chair facing his enemy-turned-guest.

“Apparently. That must be an acquired taste,” the scythe-wielder shrugs. “Not that I remember any of it.”

They both know that REAPERs don’t usually drink, seeing how it messes up with the ELIXIR procedure. Before he can help himself to another shot, Qrow luckily remembers he can’t hold his drink very well, not after years of keeping away from the bottle ever since he became a REAPER. Heat is quickly ascending to his face, pouring through his whole body, through all the human flesh covering robotic parts. Without losing time, he fumbles to unbutton his shirt with his valid hand. 

“Wait, what are you...”

“No, not stripping...” he slurs, pressing a hand to his host’s sculptural shoulder for reassurance. “My heart can power both of us while I fix yours.”

He demonstrates while he explains, pressing at a steel panel behind alabaster skin that swivels open, revealing a purring reactor powering a mechanical pump. He detaches a pair of cables and hands them to Clover, who similarly leaves his shirt gaping to uncover his prosthetic. 

“Nervous?” Qrow teases, consciously noticing the human staring at his bare chest while licking his lips. 

“You’re inebriated and about to take my heart in your hand, after trying to kill me ten minutes ago,” the ex-soldier protests weakly, without moving to stop the half-android. 

“Relax, it’s just a little… heart to heart moment,” the latter jokes, cringing slightly at the half-hearted pun. 

The Captain’s metal heart - rounded, warm, pounding, a copper-tinted marvel of craftsmanship - clicks off his chest smoothly, before the REAPER delicately deposits it into its owner’s open palm. Qrow leans forward to implant his own cables into Clover’s chest cavity, keeping his vital systems afloat while he tends to the loose wiring of the prosthetic valves. He grabs a soldering iron on the workshop desk, while the human fortunately provides him with spare parts to replace the cracked ones with - it’s harder to do with one hand than Qrow expected, but mending the veteran’s heart had appeared more urgent than dealing with his forearm. 

They stay in focused silence for a few instants, the incandescent heat from the soldering iron caressing both their faces. Qrow’s sensors pick up the change in rhythmic pulsation from Clover’s prosthetic and verify its return to normal function, before taking it out of the human’s hand and pressing it back to his chest. Their fingers brush softly in the process, rendering both men suddenly aware of their increased proximity, of the REAPER’s hand resting against the Captain’s chest, surveying the accelerated heartbeat vibrating through flesh and metal. Russet and teal eyes meet fleetingly, almost tenderly, before an embarrassed Qrow remembers to reattach his own heartstrings and close his chest reactor. 

The half-human bashfully takes a quick swig of his drink, looking away from the veteran’s face as the latter breaks into a series of thankful words awkwardly filling the silence. 

“... huh?” Qrow grumbles absent-mindedly. 

“I said I found your hand.”

With a grin and a wink, the former soldier drops the robotic appendage onto the desk beside them. The appendage is scratched where the bug had bound onto, but nothing that standard-issue spare parts can’t replace. 

“It’s a good thing you cut it off before the hacker bug could do too much damage. It fed off the power from your system, so as soon as your hand powered down the bug just dropped off.”

“Disgusting leech. I bet you’d have kept the hand, if you didn’t stupidly want to return the favour for me fixing your heart.”

“...Maybe?”

“Would’ve fit nicely in your collection of REAPER parts lying all over the place. Why are you so obsessed with us anyway? Why do you keep investigating us to stop us? Shouldn’t you be mad after the enemy that stabbed you through the heart, instead of the government that sent you to war?”

“I am mad at the enemy, there’s not a single day I’m not mad at them, not a single night I don’t wake up in sweat thinking they’re back for me, to kill me for real this time. But it’s over now, the enemy was defeated, and there’s not much else I can do about it but just live. No, I’m mad at REAPERs because they’re an issue I can do something about.”

As he speaks, he carefully pops out the ruined pieces of Qrow’s hand, replacing them just as meticulously with spare fragments lying around his office in labelled compartments. The severed hand is less life-threatening, but more tedious and time-consuming than repairing his heart, and the part-human cannot help but ask for more detail while he watches the other man work.

“But why the REAPERs in particular? It’s thanks to REAPERs that kids these days don’t have to go out to war and bear the trauma of it any more, not the way you did. Our Atlesian technology makes us stronger and makes sure we can’t be destroyed, almost never in a way that’s impossible to repair. And the ELIXIR treatment ensures we don’t have to bear any psychological scars. You’ve been through a lot, and your scars cloud your judgement. If you were a REAPER, you wouldn’t have to face such suffering, you wouldn’t have to let the pain control your actions.”

“Hence why I don’t want to be a REAPER,” Clover muses melancholically, methodically grafting nerve endings together between Qrow’s wrist and his severed hand, strong fingers working with surprising, albeit not unwelcome delicateness. “The trauma is hard to bear, but it’s livable, and it teaches us lessons. I think it’s important to remember one’s scars not to repeat past mistakes.”

“The ELIXIR doesn’t make us forget events, only the pain and suffering tied to them. The Judges make sure of it.”

“The Judges serve the government, and the government wants you to repeat past mistakes when it benefits them. That is, when it helps them keep a flawed system in place.”

“Every system is flawed, doomed to be imperfect. This one just does it in an ever so slightly less painless way.”

“Still, you trust them blindly with tampering with your memory, because they mess with your mind and leave you no choice. This may sound right to you, but it isn’t how things should be.”

“Is this why you protect the girl? Ruby?”

“I don’t know her as well as you think. I only know she came after me looking for data on you. I don’t know if she’s really your daughter, I guess you don’t know either.”

“Lucky guess,” Qrow scowls through gritted teeth as the soldering iron burns the cables of his arm and hand back together. 

“I’m still piecing together all the puzzle pieces, but the evidence is… intriguing, to say the least. If she’s really who she thinks she is, then she’s important.”

The REAPER nods in agreement… It is unknown whether REAPERs can have children, since they were once humans, broken in different ways through the misfortunes of life before they were accommodated into half-androids by the government through painstaking bioengineering and genetic engineering. REAPERs are different from full humans not only through their robot parts, but also genetically, both through the heavy gene editing needed to make them and through extreme epigenetics caused by the ELIXIR. If they can reproduce, this means something huge, that producing a population of REAPERs or half-REAPERS is possible, that everyone can be shielded from trauma and pain by the ELIXIR cure, that flawed human negative emotions can be kept at bay, kept from attracting SALEM, that there will never be another Fall…

Unless Ruby, or whoever the REAPER’s child may be, can feel trauma, but in a different way, and can serve as the compromise someone like Clover may be looking for and someone like Qrow would not be opposed to. A body with the strength of a REAPER and the sensitive soul of a human...

“What will you do if you find out about her?” the scythe-wielder prompts.

“When I find out… when we find out… I don’t know.”

“Maybe she should be allowed to choose her own destiny,” Qrow speaks after some silent instants, slowly taking in the realisation of what Ruby could mean to him, to Atlas, to the world. “She should not let her birth decide for her.”

“You really don’t remember anything? It doesn’t sound like having a daughter would be a traumatic event. I wonder if the government erased it from your memory to keep it a secret from you, if so why? Or from anyone else, for that matter, since even a REAPER’s mind can be hacked,” Clover’s friendly tone betrayed a hint of disappointment. 

“I don’t know, and I don’t remember much else about my personal life. I remember my sister’s disappearance, her airship leaving for space and never coming back.”

“The REAPER III, Raven Branwen. Disappeared in a terraforming mission on the Martian colony. That’s hardly even classified information, anyone could have found that online.”

The half-robot blinks slowly, in lieu of memories vivid imagination filling his mind with the vision of his sister standing before the bright sunset of Mars and its dual moons, red sands buffeting through her feathery mane of jet black hair. 

“I don’t understand why she left, why I remember so little of her, so it’s evident our relation was difficult and filled with traumatic events. I still want to find her, to figure out the truth and fix it, but I won’t let that define me. And I don’t think anyone should let their trauma define them, including you.”

“Thank you,” Clover voices wryly, somewhat to the REAPER’s surprise, “for saying exactly what I needed to hear, what I keep forgetting everyday. Because it’s hard, you know. It’s hard to push through it and not let it mold you, shape you. I don’t have to go through ELIXIR, and yet I keep forgetting that important thing. I keep letting the pain and the fear shape who I am and choose my enemies for me, and I shouldn’t let it.”

The human is stitching the scythe-wielder’s skin together with healing tape, his handiwork almost completed. But he can’t go on, the stress too heavy on his chiselled shoulders, like something visibly snaps within him, rattling his clockwork heart. He cannot help but accept the REAPER’s warm arms wrapping around him protectively, cannot help but press his face against the lean, pale, firm half-android, half-human chest. 

“No one gets to shape who you are, no one but you,” Qrow murmurs to the shaking man between his arms. “And it must be hard, like a battle, like a war… who am I to know? Had you lost yourself completely already, you wouldn’t be doubting like this, you would just be soldiering on, trying to kill me like you planned to eradicate all the REAPERS, guided by your pain and your fears. How you’re feeling shows there’s still someone there, someone in that beating metal heart, someone so strong that even that much suffering can’t have obliterated him completely. And I’m sorry if I ever doubted that.”

The REAPER’s thumb wipes at a tear rolling down the veteran’s cheek, as the latter gently pulls away from the hug with an embarrassed glare. Clover reaches for the bottle and downs a glass, then another. In turn, Qrow feels awkward about watching the man drink alone and joins in, until they’ve finished two flasks and are about to open another one. 

“Come on,” the scythe-wielder chides without aggression. “Let’s get you to bed.”

The former soldier can barely protest as his previously agile hands struggle to open the bottle. A strong robotic arm supports at the shoulders, guiding him to the small bedroom separated from the workshop by an old wooden door. It hadn’t been very hard to find in such a small settlement, Qrow had simply used his infrared sensors to locate the bed, hardly one of his more impressive feats. The human immediately lets himself tumble onto the worn mattress and white sheets, leaving his half-robot counterpart to gasp at the sudden loss of Clover’s heat against his skin. Teal eyes blink glassily at him, and the REAPER’s heart clenches at the thought of having to leave the inebriated veteran on his own, at the mercy of his nightmares, of the ghosts of his past. 

“I’m going to stick on the rest of the skin on my hand,” he says awkwardly, running valid fingers through his unkempt black hair. “But I’ll check on you afterwards, promise.”

Qrow ends up doing exactly that, gluing the healing bandages onto the battered fragments of skin, one after the other, then waiting before detaching them and checking for proper regeneration that doesn’t take longer than minutes. It’s a mind-numbing task, rendered non-trivial by his alcohol-addled state. Somewhere in a far corner of his mind, he wonders how much of what just transpired will be erased from his mind by the next ELIXIR treatment, by the government. He can’t avoid the procedure forever, withdrawal from it being known to cause fast neuro degeneracy in REAPERs, followed by death within mere days. Dying doesn’t sound so bad, not unlike being too drunk to stay awake, not unlike going through ELIXIR but staying in it forever, never resurfacing. 

But if he dies, there’s not much he could do for Ruby, when the government finds out, through reading his sensors or otherwise. Because they’ll find out eventually, and then they’ll want to get her, use her, Qrow can’t dare imagine what they’d do to her to understand how she withstood trauma. That is, if the anti-REAPER dissidents don’t find her first and consider her as a liability to eliminate or a messiah to sacrifice. Qrow can’t even begin thinking about what they’ll do to Clover when they figure out the role he played in aiding Ruby…

But the alcohol washes these thoughts away, and tomorrow is another day, seemingly so far away… He carefully discards the last of the bandages, running his fingers through the skin to check for creases and slits where they shouldn’t be. In his drunken state, he can’t find any, so he heads back to the bedroom to see if the ex-soldier’s fallen asleep. 

The slight creaking of the wooden door is enough to make Clover jump upright, staring wide-eyed at the approaching half-android. Qrow’s shirt is still unbuttoned, his skin lightly flushed by the drinks, a dark necklace standing in sharp contrast to his cream-toned chest. Only the faintest lines run symmetrically on either side of his torso, delimiting where different metal panellings meet just under the skin, able to click open and close to replace any damaged inner parts. The creases trace straight lines like the horizon, melding into gentle curves, then smoothly transitioning back into sharp angles. REAPERs are a jewel of technology, a combination of robot raw strength with human… humanity, flawed humanity, and Qrow is no exception. Clover’s fingers follow the lines like a map as if of their own volition, his hand moving like a moth attracted to the light. Under the expanse of warm skin, both human muscles and android engines relax in approval under his feather-light touches.

“You’re drunk,” the REAPER IV protests weakly, tentatively pushing the human away, knowing he won’t be able to resist much longer if Clover continues touching him this way. 

“It’s not a spur of the moment…”, the veteran mumbles, “I’ve been following your whereabouts for so many years to track down the REAPERs, you have no idea how long I’ve been thinking about this, thinking about wanting you.”

“The great Clover Ebi, the slayer of REAPERs, the urban legend whose name makes the government tremble has wet dreams about me,” Qrow chuckles softly. “Well, I can’t say I’ve never had dirty thoughts while staring at holograms of you when you were my target.”

Only when he pulls away to look straight into teal eyes does he see it - other humans look at him like they want to pick him apart and put him back together, robot part after robot part, shaping him to their own liking. Clover stares back like he wants Qrow in all of his entirety, in all his brokenness and wholeness, as he is, as he was, and as he’ll never be. 

And Qrow wants to apologise for not understanding him for so many years, for taking his motivations for granted. Wants to thank him for opening his eyes, for showing him the weakness in his ways. Wants to tell him it’s okay, that he’s broken, and that’s fine, that he needs to heal, and that’s hard. Wants to tell him how much he respects him, how much he fucking admires him, for keeping moving forward no matter what, for doing all he’d done for Ruby, all he’d done for Qrow already…

But it’s too much, it’s overwhelming, both for his human and robot brains, and now’s not the time. For Clover’s hands, after discarding Qrow’s shirt, are tracing downwards, slowly but surely, toward his navel, pulling at his pants’ waistband in an unspoken question. 

“Please, do,” the REAPER groans impatiently, helping his enemy-turned-crush with practised hands. 

The veteran doesn’t need to be told twice. He easily peels his partner’s underwear off his pale skin, and revels at the sight of his hardening member that stands just like him, half-human, half-machine. The Captain’s fully human, oh-so-human tongue flicks experimentally at the tip, eliciting a sharp gasp down the REAPER’s throat. Encouraged by the muffled sound, he takes down Qrow’s sizable length into his mouth, the pressure of burning, full lips on his member almost overbearing for the scythe-wielder. Red eyes slide shut, too deft fingers are fondling at his balls, as carefully and precisely as Clover fights, as Clover works, with that same strength and gentleness that means everything, that promises to never let go. 

The pace is slow, excruciatingly slow at first, leaving the frustrated half-robot to cry out, jutting his hips at the human’s throat. The soldier gags at that, his teeth almost leaving a mark, and for a second of flashing pain and pleasure Qrow worries if he’s hurt his partner. But Clover, ever the quick thinker, understands and picks up the pace, expertly manipulating his rhythm to send the REAPER unravelling, utterly unravelling at his ministrations. 

Strong fingers tangle through his short brown hair, still sensitive digits from the recent patch-up taking in all the asperities, the tiny details, sensors ablaze. It’s going too fast, and yet it’s just right, just what Qrow needs to make up for lost time in years of thinking about this man and not being able to touch him. Everything is spiralling out of control, and yet everything is where it should be, to the point where his robotic mind completely shuts off from computing probabilities, for the first time in whoever knows how long. For there’s nowhere else he’d rather be, nothing else he’d rather do than just live in the right here, right now. 

The scythe-wielder’s knees buckle under his weight, prompting his partner to help him down to the bed. The sheets are worn out, soft, everything feeling suddenly sharp and precise as Qrow’s drunkenness starts to fade away. He senses Clover’s weight slumping onto the mattress at his side, skin brushing against skin in a searing contact that reminds him how close, how impossibly close he is to the edge. Of course, the human also notices, no sensors are needed to see something so obvious. He reaches for the mess of belts of his ragtag veteran vigilante uniform, those belts that infuriate Qrow to the uttermost point in this very moment. The android contemplates using his superior strength to tear the clothing apart, but Clover shoves him back. And to apologise for making Qrow wait, leans down to kiss him. 

The contact between their lips is surprisingly intimate, simple, almost chaste compared to all they’d done already, after holding each other’s hearts in their open palms. The REAPER grins slightly at the taste of himself on the human’s lips, eliciting a chuckle from his partner whose tongue playfully darts out to lick Qrow’s lips, exerting just enough passionate pressure to send a shiver down his spine, down his entire body. Cupping Clover’s shapely jaw, the half-robot struggles for deeper access, their tongues clashing for dominance, deftly, deeply the same way their weapons had collided on the battlefield. Everything feels electric around them, within them, maybe some of Qrow’s wiring was knocked loose, but in the instant they couldn’t care less. Desire is pounding, pulsing through the half-human’s body, like a caged crow cawing its way out. Eventually Clover wins, gently pushing his partner’s head into the puffy pillow as muscular fingers caress at Qrow’s entrance, waiting for a nod of approval before beginning their exploration. 

REAPERs are self-lubricating, and Qrow wonders how Clover knows this - yes, all REAPERs are, it’s a design feature added by a wary engineer on a sleepless night. Seeing the Captain’s expertise on those of Qrow’s kind and their spare parts, the scythe-wielder can’t say he’s exactly surprised. He can’t say very much in general, because he doesn’t want to break the kiss even as it degenerates into hot sloppiness. His partner is too distracted with probing his orifice with a firm finger, finding its way through the heat of him, playing him like no one ever has before, no one he remembers. Moaning loudly, he buries his face into the crook of Clover’s shoulder, warm as a bird’s nest, powerful as the deadliest of weapons, and licks and bites his way across the flushed skin. REAPERs are also incredible multitaskers - and Qrow’s oversensitive hand easily finds his partner’s rising erection, wrapping his half-robotic grip around the member, taking in his length, his width, his curvature, his everything. 

When a second finger enters him, his sensors are saturated, fireworks tearing him apart from the inside. The former soldier is whispering sweet, encouraging nothings, mapping his skin with burning kisses as if cartographing his very own terra incognita. When a third digit is inserted, his robot brain gives up altogether at solving the three-body problem as each unpredictable turn, each changing pace or trajectory elicits the most delectable, oh-so-delicious raw feeling. Qrow’s losing track of time, and the world may as well have stopped weren’t it for the regular pumping of his fist up and down the Captain’s length, rhythmic like a ticking clock, like a heartbeat as time trickles by. 

“Clover!” he cries out, teetering too close to his breaking point. 

The Captain happily obliges, his stiff manhood finally,  _ finally  _ pushing its way through Qrow’s opening. The REAPER’s body arcs upward, brimming with unbridled emotion, as Clover pounds into him, slender hip bones rising to meet him each time. But Qrow’s too impatient, nearing his orgasm too fast, demanding a faster pace as his fingers mold his partner’s butt cheeks, drawing him even closer. He doesn’t know how long it takes, entirely too long, before Clover finds the right angle that makes his vision flash away, hitting that tangle of human nerves and android cables deep inside the furnace of him. 

He hits twice, thrice, with that surgical precision that accompanies all of his actions, while Qrow attempts to capture his partner’s lips in a burning kiss. He can’t truly pour his heart into it, for his world is lurching, spinning away before fading to white behind his shut eyelids. Clover’s fingers give a gentle tug on the half-human’s standing erection, and that’s enough to send him over the edge. 

Qrow lies dazed for infinite instants as his sensors slowly return to function, blissfully aware of the Captain riding his orifice into his own climax. He feels the dip in the mattress when Clover’s larger frame collapses by his side in complete exhaustion, wrapping a powerful arm across his partner’s chest. Crimson eyes focus on the shape of the bicep just before his nose, admiring the human’s perfectly chiselled musculature and smooth-as-silk skin. As they both bask in the warmth and afterglow, the REAPER’s faintly aware that they should go clean up, but both of them are too drained to even lift a finger, after a long night of fighting, open-heart surgery, and whatnot. 

Counting the rhythmic pulses of the human’s prosthetic heart as it ripples through their connected bodies, Qrow loses track of time after several silent seconds. At some point, he feels the Captain shifting by his side to hug him tighter, and absentmindedly kisses the brunette’s tousled hair in response. 

“Is the great REAPER IV trying to steal my heart,” the former soldier teases sleepily, “or is this just a ploy to rip it out and leave me for dead?”

“‘M too tired to do that,” Qrow whines, his fingers too numb and wary to do more than caress the smooth surface of the pumping prosthetic. 

“Good. Because I’m not that easy to kill.”

“I believe you,” the part-android decides, trembling digits trailing along the scar tissue surrounding the mechanical heart. 

Clover shudders against his hand at that, and a vague flash of panic crosses the REAPER’s mind, worried to have triggered something. But before he can withdraw his touch, the soldier’s firm fist catches his wrist, keeping him in place like a lifeline. 

“I trust you,” the human murmurs, and that’s enough, that means the world to Qrow and then some, that means an anchor of certainty, no matter how small, in an abyss of stirring chaos, of whirling probabilities, fortunes, and misfortune. 

The Captain’s eyelids slide shut, contently resting his face against his partner’s chest while the half-robot’s palm still gently presses against his metal heart. As they drift into a fitful sleep, Qrow can only pray for nightmares and ghosts of the past not to tread on Clover’s dreams. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This my first time writing smut, yes seriously. Is that weird? Idk. Comments and opinions are welcome! Do you want more REAPER IV? Anyone interested? Also tell me in the comments. This was supposed to be a two-shot but I kind of have ideas laid down for more. In general I could get used to an off-volume schedule where I update every Wednesday/Thursday, what do you think? xx


	3. Sunlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short, calm chapter before everything goes down to hell...

Golden stripes streak Qrow’s wary eyes, streak his fingers as he shields his face from the sunlight filtering through the horizontal slits of the blinds. Everything is whirling, lurching, lulling softly, like he’s at the bottom of the ocean, like the sunlight dances around him, ever-flowing, and yet the sun shines far above, too far out of reach. The silence feels calm, heavy like an anchor, only Clover’s steady, regular respiration stirring the quietness like a gentle tide. The Captain’s bare shoulder and arm lay uncovered by the crumpled white bed sheets, each curve, each muscle bending the parallel sun rays, molding the light like clay. Agreeable warmth practically radiates from Qrow’s still asleep partner, and the REAPER basks in the golden heat, not daring to lift a finger, never daring to disrupt the ephemeral, blissful stillness. Clover’s face turns away from him, but his body has never looked so relaxed, as if all tension vacated his musculature, and Qrow wonders if the nightmares of past wars spared the ex-soldier this time, even if just this time. 

Qrow’s aware he should leave, he still needs to fix his weapon and to come up with something for his mission report, since the mere thought of handing in Captain Ebi to the authorities is simply unbearable right now. He knows that this simple decision will have consequences, even in his hangover state, his mind’s still able to estimate likelihoods of possible outcomes. He knows that the government tracks his location, as a REAPER, such that staying by the veteran’s side would only draw officials’ attention to Clover’s hide-out. He knows the government will confront him for his choices, will send more REAPERs after Clover after Qrow failed to capture him, after Ruby when they piece the puzzle together and realise how important she might be. He knows he’ll have to stand up for his actions, for Ruby, for Clover. He doesn’t know if he’ll have the strength, for right now leaving the peacefully sleeping warrior’s side, leaving him alone to the demons of his past feels harder than most battles he’s ever fought, more terrifying than most enemies he’s ever defeated. 

As the golden sunlight spills onto the bed sheets, pooling gently around them, Qrow plants a light kiss on Clover’s cheek before dressing and exiting, pointedly never looking back. 

* * *

Yang can’t help but grin.

Mantle is no place for a dog. Especially not a long-bodied, short-legged, fluffy, rebellious teenage pup staring at her with a wide toothy smile, pink tongue poking out. Especially not after said canine lost a bag leg in a collision with a motorbike while still a puppy, limb that had been replaced by a small black wheel that toots adorably when he runs. But then, who can resist the charms of Zwei 2.0? Who can resist the round eyes begging for a walk? Not Yang, for sure. 

“Come on, Zwei, let’s go home. Let’s go back to Ruby.”

The puppy yaps happily at the mention of his mistress, prancing up and down to lick at the blonde’s hand before running down the small street, enthusiastically pulling at his leash. Yang rushes after him, brown boots sliding against the humid asphalt as she tugs on the rope just before a hovering trailer passes before the pet’s nose. The levitating cart wafts warm scents of boiling soup in its wake, mingling with smells of spicy street foods from ragtag trailers randomly arranged on either side of the street, almost masking the vapid stench of moldy Mantle poverty. Zwei’s pompom tail on his rounded butt wags and fluffs up happily as he picks up a discarded bone from a butcher’s stand, as he dashes past spinning pancakes expertly tossed up and down onto sizzling frying pans, as he bounces by crafty hands making noodles several times the length of his body. 

The blonde barely stops to buy some skewers, holding the wrapped food in one hand while the other controls the leash. Someone yells, and she rapidly ducks before she can spill any hot sauce onto herself - a flock of bird dives through the narrow street, talons and wings almost grazing her unkempt hair as they swoop dangerously low to avoid the Manticore flying overhead. The imposing, winged lion-like surveillance robot scans the alleyway with intent red eyes, searching for any disturbances or undesirables, before flying to the next block on its monotonous path. Shrugging, Yang turns around the corner and pushes a small, rusty metal door, allowing the dog to immediately barge into Ruby’s workshop. 

Electronic parts, papers and wrappers, and other miscellaneous items litter the concrete floor, squeaking loudly under paw and under foot as Zwei and Yang walk in. Alerted by the sound, Ruby calls down without turning away from her desk. 

“Thanks for walking Zwei!”

“No problem. Thanks for fixing up Bumbleby in the meanwhile.”

“Ah, it was just a few scratches, nothing too bad,” the red-cloaked girl mutters, pointing at some detached parts lined up on her desk: a soldered-back robot hand, a replaced wheel, an oiled shoulder joint. “Guess that Armagigas bot’s bark was worse than his bite.”

“I’m still mad I couldn’t defeat it. Make the Schnee girl eat up that pretty smirk of hers.”

As she inspects the parts, Yang munches on a shred of minced meat from her skewers, tossing a small piece at Zwei who more than ecstatically catches. 

“Maybe if you weren’t so distracted by staring at her face, you’d have won?”

“Well, no wonder she’s cute. Her family is one of the richest in Atlas. She doesn’t have to worry about malnutrition or diseases up there. And here she thinks that participating in underground bot fights makes her look like an act of rebellion in her father’s eyes.”

“Are you just mad because she’s still the reigning champion of your league?” Ruby prompts half-heartedly. 

“... Maybe? I mean, I was so close to ending her streak and beating her score, until I tied with her. What d’you say, Bumbleby? Want to put some war paint on and go get a rematch?”

As she speaks, she draws a can of yellow spray paint from her belt, but Ruby stops her before she can put it to use. 

“No yellow in my office! It messes with the red and black colour scheme,” she bemoans looking down at the scarlet soles of her raven-tinted shoes.

“Fine. I’ll go outside.”

On her way, she throws the wooden skewer pick like a dart into the nearest bin, mentally fist-bumping herself for the bullseye. 

“Ruby? Are you sure everything’s all right? You seem… distracted.”

After years of knowing the younger girl, that she’d seen as a sister since their orphanage days, Yang has rarely seen the usually enthusiastic Ruby nervous enough to decline walking Zwei, or antsy enough not to want gold paint in her workshop. The blonde can’t help but worry for her closest friend.

“Yeah… yeah. Just need some alone time.”

“If you say so.”

Ruby knows Yang’s there, and always will be, if she needs to talk. And she’ll be able to talk, one day, she promises herself, but now’s not the time. Now’s not the time, for she must figure this out on her own, and letting more people on the secret would serve to paint a target on their backs. As soon as the blonde exits, closing the door uncharacteristically quietly, Ruby switches her monitor screens back on. Jet black terminals display the contents of the chip Clover gave her last night on the roof. There’s some motley content, blurry photos and videos of REAPERs in action caught by surveillance Manticores, excerpts of mission briefs or reports. More importantly, the chip contains fragments of DNA sequences from the first four REAPERs, most likely from samples collected from discarded parts found on battlefields. The Captain has annotated the files in sparse places, highlighting genes related to accelerated healing or enhanced reflexes, inserted into the half-robots by government officials. Fingers tapping with agitation, Ruby pulls up the comparison she launched with her own genome sequences, holding her breath as the terminals slow to a stop, revealing the results of her analysis. 

Ruby fumbles her brow in confusion - while similarities appear considerable, the overlap isn’t markedly larger between her DNA and that of either of the REAPERs. The closeness between her own DNA and Summer Rose’s isn’t exactly surprising, the red-caped girl having heard over and over that her peculiar silver irises were reminiscent of the REAPER I’s, her hero and model, the world’s martyr. Taiyang Xiao Long - Ruby’s more curious about this resemblance, never having noticed any physical trait she may share with him - but then, the REAPER II remains elusive and rarely makes the news, never seen on Earth again since he left for Titan as the personal bodyguard to Consul Ozpin. Ruby flicks through the photos, staring into the melancholic purple eyes standing out amidst a tan, confident face, wondering what he’d be like as a father. She knows the REAPERs III and IV, Raven and Qrow Branwen, are twins, so the comparable amount DNA similarity she shares with both of them isn’t that telling. 

She could be the daughter of any, or any pair of the first four REAPERs, from what the analyses show. Or any of the other REAPERs, for that matter. After all, the few labelled sequences that presented overlap with Ruby’s own genome were somehow related to the genetic enhancement the REAPERs had all gone through, optimising them for battle. Of course, the fact Ruby was too young to remember anything before she arrived at the orphanage, before she met Yang, definitely doesn’t help. The first thing she remembers is the cold, the humidity sifting into her very bones the night they met, her little fist inside Yang’s larger hand, warm against the storm outside, warm as the heat of a thousand suns in her memory...

“Ruby!”

She startles at the sound of her name, at the urgency in the blonde’s cry. Zwei 2.0 is jumping up and down the door, banging loudly against the worn metal, then running to his mistress, prosthetic wheel squeaking madly, then back to the aperture. Ruby just has time to pick up her scythe before a resounding clang knocks the metal door open. 

* * *

_ One hour earlier _

Working on his scythe helps Qrow keep his mind off… other things. With the disciplined precision of a robot, he solders two fragments of the large blade together, sanding off the excess metal at the cracks. A small, carefully mischievous smirk on his lips, he adjusts a set of electromagnets in each blade chunk and in the hilt, allowing the parts to stick together magnetically upon activation should the weapon be shattered again. He flicks a switch to test the newest improvement, watching as the scythe self-assembles on the floor before his eyes. 

Just his luck, a buzzing sound from his Scroll disrupts his thoughts as a call reaches him, making him release the button in surprise, leaving the parts of his weapon to tumble and scatter at his feet. Sighing as he rearranges the pieces - he still needs to fine tune a few settings before it can reassemble itself - Qrow checks through his call logs only to find thirteen missed calls from REAPER VI, sprinkled throughout the night. This doesn’t sound good - just the thought of this particular colleague elicits a groan from Qrow. Using his finger rings to summon and control a holographic keyboard, he types a quick message to his REAPER counterpart. 

_ R4_qbranwen: hey tyrian, what’s up _

_ did you hurt yourself again and need an ELIXIR fix _

_ R6_tcallows: no, I’ve got all the ELIXIR I need _

_ R4_qbranwen: luck you I guess _

_ Then why are you bugging me? _

_ R6_tcallows: I heard you let little red slip between your fingers. _

_ A Manticore saw her run away. _

_ R4_qbranwen: I wasn’t after her _

_ R6_tcallows: How interesting, dare I say so myself. _

_ Who was your target then? _

_ R4_qbranwen: Captain Ebi _

_ R6_tcallows: Fascinating! Did you take care of him? _

_ R4_qbranwen: none of your business _

_ R6_tcallows: Well, I’ve been sent to fix your screw-up _

_ and take Ruby Rose _

_ dead or alive. _

_ Any tips you’d have on the matter? How did she escape you of all people? _

_ Qrow? _

_ Thank me later for the heads up, pal, _

_ You’re welcome. _

_ I’m such a great colleague and friend. _

_ Lucky you, huh? _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Zwei 2.0 just cracks me up, lol (because Zwei already means two in German). I’m weird, I know. Next week I’m travelling so I’ll upload on Monday instead of Wednesday. Stay warm and posted xx


	4. Venom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Where everything goes down to hell...

“Ruby,” Yang exhales weakly, a REAPER’s razor-sharp blade pressed against the pale arch of her neck. 

“So  _ you’re _ Ruby,” her attacker sneers, drawing his curved wrist blade even closer to her skin, causing a shiver to run down the red-caped girl’s spine. “Well Ruby Rose, I’ve come to take you, by order of the government of Atlas. Come with me and I won’t hurt Goldilocks here… I mean, maybe, I can’t promise very much...”

“Tyrian Callows... the REAPER VI...” the younger girl recognises, taking in the teasing yellow eyes, the scorpion tail Augmentation leaning languidly from side to side with low metallic clicks, the devious grin never leaving thin, parched lips. 

“Don’t listen to him,” Yang pleads.

“Oh, cut it will you? You hostages are all so  _ cliché _ ! Don’t listen to him, save yourself, do the right thing… Listen to the grown-up in the room, Ruby, put down the scythe, it’s sharp you know, you could get someone hurt with that.”

Zwei 2.0 is barking loudly from a corner of the room. Hands shaking around the shaft of her weapon, she bends down slowly, scythe-wielding arm extended before her as if to lay her blade at her feet. 

“Good girl,” Tyrian cackles madly. “You understand quickly...”

“Guess what, I do,” she retorts.

As the scythe almost touches the floor, she throws it rebounding off the ground into the air, straight at the Augment’s face. He reaches out his blade, easily deflecting her weapon - which falls squarely into Yang’s hand, just as Ruby planned. Without missing a beat, the blonde slashes around in an oblique orbit, forcing Tyrian to step back and dodge. In a fraction of a second, Ruby rushes forward, catches her scythe and leaps to slice down in one smooth motion, her weapon colliding with his twin blades crossed over his head as he bends backward elastically. Smiling deviously, he kicks her in the stomach, sending her flying backward across the cluttered workshop floor and out the rusted door.

The REAPER immediately follows her to the narrow street outside, only slightly fazed when Yang’s motorcycle crashes into his back, sending him plummeting into the nearest sandwich trailer. The blonde herself takes several slow seconds to recover from the crash, only to see the metal stinger jabbed toward her friend, who spins her scythe as an impenetrable wall before her. Tracing one smooth arc guided by her little, agile hands, her blade curls behind her to slash diagonally at a street stand’s soup pan. Dancing away with the momentum of her strike, she watches as the boiling liquid spills toward her opponent, scalding his outfit at the contact. 

Wasting no time, he curls his stinger like a spring onto the smoking floor and pounces away, rebounding against both walls on either side of the alleyway. Before his feet reach the ground, he spins like a broken clockwork ballerina, both wrist blades swinging successively at Ruby who barely manages to dodge. As onlookers gather to watch the street fight, Yang attempts to punch the REAPER from behind - only for his stinger to wrap against her wrist and toss her into the air over his head. She would have landed straight into the silver-eyed girl’s blade weren’t it for the scythe-wielder quickly retracting her weapon. 

The world blurs briefly in the aftermath of their collision as Ruby clumsily scrambles to their feet. Regaining her footing first, the blonde knows it’s pointless to transform Bumbleby into its giant mech suit form without tearing apart the narrow alleyway. Instead, she offers the younger girl a hand, dragging her to sit at the back of her bike before igniting the engine. One arm slung around Yang’s waist before her, the red-caped girl presses a switch to make her blade swivel from one side to the other of the pole, successively parrying both Tyrian’s bladed arms as they attempt to slash the back tyre. Cursing under his breath, the Augment pounces onto a nearby floating cart, a butcher’s stand attracting swarms of flies. Cutting and kicking at its occupants with an elated smirk, he loses no time in hijacking it and chasing the girls down the populated street. 

With a quick, disgruntled whiff at some poultry carcass dangling before his nose, he rides the floating trailer like a hoverboard, controlling its direction by shifting his weight between his legs. Ahead of him, Bumbleby navigates nimbly down the crowded alley, in tight zigzag between haphazardly arranged food trucks. Never looking away from the duo, he bends down to pick up two butchers’ knives on chopping boards at his feet, spins them playfully in each hand, and throws both at Ruby’s head. Gasping urgently at the faint woosh of the blades slicing through the humid air, barely audible over the grumbling of the motorcycle’s engine, the scythe-wielder briefly slams her weapon tip into the ground, tilting the vehicle to the side and out of the way of the deadly projectiles. 

“We’ve gotta stop him,” Ruby grunts as they pass a seafood trailer, holding up her weapon to deflect another knife flying her way, this one impaling a dead fish with uneven tooth marks where their for bit its head off its body - the supposed REAPER’s daughter shudders at that. 

“Take this,” the taller girl yells in response, handing her a sparking firecracker to chuck at their enemy.

The explosive lands by a spice trailer, detonations of powdered saffron, carmine, paprika brightly filling the grimy Mantle streets and almost covering the Augment’s demented, sneezing laughter. Yang seizes the opportunity to take a sharp left into a smaller market alley out of Tyrian’s sight, too narrow for any carts to enter. 

“Did we lose him?” the blonde comments worriedly, lilac eyes, followed by silver, carefully scanning the cluttered space for signs of the scorpion-tailed REAPER.

As something soft falls toward her face, Ruby looks upward only to see Tyrian gleefully ziplining down a washing line above them by the dull crooks of his wrist weapons, dropping flowing shirts and wet sheets onto the girls below. The red-caped girl struggles to shake off the clothes hiding her view and Yang’s, trying to avoid humid items wrapping around the blade of her scythe. There is the faintest sound of metal tearing through fabric, followed by the soft thuds of boots against concrete as the REAPER runs onto the vertical wall by their side, using his enhanced legs to catch up with them and land into a supple crouch in front of Bumbleby, blocking the tiny path. 

“The glasses,” Yang calls out, only earning a confusedly lifted brow from Tyrian. 

But Ruby understands, standing unsteadily onto the back of the motorcycle to cleave at an advert for binoculars and optical prostheses hanging overhead with her scythe. The metal billboard falls straight onto the Augment, who simply lifts it up with one hand without taking much damage - and provides a perfect ramp to propel the girls’ vehicle soaring into the air past him. Tightening her grip around Yang, Ruby feels her heart pumping as the motorbike flies through the grey Mantle afternoon. At the top of its trajectory, Bumbleby stands near-perfectly still before plummeting again, causing the girls to bend over to narrowly avoid a low stone gate overhead. 

Still catching her breath as they land, the perhaps-REAPER’s offspring fails to notice the optician billboard flying at her, hitting her in the ribs and knocking her sideways off Yang’s bike into a deserted dead end. Pain is throbbing through her leg as she hits the wet ground, lacing at every fiber of her body. Everything is spinning, too fast, too red, and every smallest shard of pebble and garbage between the floor and her skin pierces at her epiderm like a thousand tiny scorpion stingers. Her hand weakly searches for her weapon while her gaze looks for Yang, her ears trying to identify the roar of Bumbleby’s engine. 

“Ouch,” Tyrian comments elegantly to himself as he punches at one of the pillars supporting the small gate between the dead end and the main street where Yang’s bike must still be. “Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch. Ouch.”

With one last blow from his half-robotic fists, the concrete gate collapses, cutting Yang off from Ruby and Tyrian before she can reach them. Through her waning daze, the crimson-caped teenager can hear her friend calling out her name. Ruby considers her options: she can’t run away from the cramped dead end street boarded by decrepit housing, hiding anywhere means putting more people in harm’s way, for this REAPER will leave nothing standing in his path until he takes the silver-eyed girl, dead or alive. So Ruby can only stand up, pick up her weapon, and fight. She doesn’t want the blonde to climb her way in to join the frey, to get hurt because of her in a battle they’re bound to lose either way, even two against one. They’re sisters in every way but by blood, and the red-clad teen couldn’t bear seeing any of Yang’s blood spilled by Tyrian. But it doesn’t mean Ruby must fight alone, or should fight alone. 

“Yang. Go find help.”

A small sigh of relief escapes her at the purr of Bumbleby’s motors fading in the distance. As Ruby turns to her enemy, she sees the Augment’s fists bleeding, skin torn away to reveal dented metal underneath. His longing gold eyes dart to a syringe emerging from his pocket, within which gleams a purple liquid: the serum used during the ELIXIR procedure, that he secretly smuggled out, which can make him forget the extreme pain from his hands. In anticipation at the sweetest release from his aches the fluid could offer him, he contemplates how much of it he should use - until a red-rimmed black boot hits him in the gut, causing his back to hit a nearby slimy wall. 

“Haven’t had enough yet? Do you really wish to be taken?” he bends down at his shorter opponent. 

Before she can answer, he headbutts her brutally, the collision with his metal-strengthened skull sprinkling stars across her field of vision. She falls into the mud, wet cold grime plastered against her face, her body, her hands down to her fingernails. She’s never felt so close to the dirt, to biting the dust. And all she can do is press on. Forward, always. Breathe. Live. Survive, by any means. 

“Impatient, aren’t you?” she taunts weakly. “I’ve sent Yang to find the Captain. So if you can wait like a good boy long enough for them to return, you can have the three of us for the price of one.”

“Who would’ve thought the little REAPER’s daughter would be so manipulative? Trying to bargain your life for those of Blondie and Clover? Too bad you won’t convince me, I’ll gladly be patient like a good dog awaiting a treat  _ after  _ I’ve cut off that nice little head of yours.”

“Then I will stop you.”

She fiercely executes a flourish with a flex of her wrist, her rotating blade countering his attack. She doesn’t know how long she can hold out like this, hopefully until help arrives. Her scythe spins out infinite orbits on either side of her as he only dodges and strikes distractedly, chuckling at the sight of the girl exhausting herself in self-defense while he probably ponders at the thought of facing the infamous Captain. His eyes don’t bother to follow the too rapid trajectory of her blade, a blur of red and grey between the two fighters, but he tracks her pattern long enough to be able to contort backward at an improbable angle as she swings overhead, dancing under her blade to grab the pole of her weapon and flick it away with his tail. 

As she gasps in surprise, she sees her scythe thrown through the air by the steel stinger, hurling toward her - just in time to sidestep the blade that embeds itself deeply into the wall at her back, slicing at her bicep through her shirt. The shaft of her scythe keeps her helplessly pinned against the concrete wall, constricting her lungs and arms, and she can’t even move or breathe when the REAPER advances toward her, his wrist blade tracing out a graceful, lethal arc…

A familiar metal hook rushes past her eyes, as an electrical cable wraps around Tyrian, pinning his stinger against his back. Above them, Yang’s bike is leaping off the nearest rooftop, while Clover bounces down the airborne motorcycle and lands onto the Augment’s shoulders. The Captain’s legs lock around Tyrian’s neck before sending him flying into the nearest wall with a powerful kick. As the REAPER progressively recovers, yelping under the electrical shocks of the fishing line, the veteran promptly withdraws Ruby’s weapon, freeing her to tumble at his feet, a grateful smile evident on her lips.

“I got you another REAPER,” she says unevenly.

“I can see that. Good work.”

But Tyrian is already twisting and turning rapidly through erratic breakdance-like positions, spinning feet up fast enough to free himself from the Captain’s rope. Retracting the now-useless line, Clover lifts his weapon like a spear and immediately charges at his enemy. The clash that ensues is of the most violent Ruby’s ever witnessed. Tyrian saunters crazily around the former soldier, evading like water, spinning like a macabre waltzer every time he strikes to increase his momentum. But Clover blocks every attack, steady as a rock and strong as a force of nature, years of experience as a model soldier guiding his every move as he precisely aims at weak spots, thrusting behind a knee, punching at a jaw, slashing at damaged fists. 

Only reveling in the pain and the thought of the ELIXIR that would wash it away, Tyrian lunges forward harder, jumping at the last second to fly over his opponent’s head. The veteran parries both wrist blades overhead with the shaft of his weapon wielded in one hand, while his arm seizes the low-hanging stinger to swing his enemy around and throw him at the remnants of the gate he’d previously brought down. Unfazed, the Augment extracts himself from the rubble, one foot tracing an arc against the dusty ground to project crumbles of concrete into Clover’s eyes. The veteran, blinded, only pauses for a fraction of a second, enough to receive a spinning kick to the head before he can catch a fist flying toward his heart. 

“You soldiers all fight the same, so predictable,” the REAPER almost laments, leans sideways to wrench his hurt hand out of Clover’s grasp and avoid the spear stabbing toward his eye. 

The rope of his opponent’s weapon lashes out like a whip, pushing Tyrian back toward Ruby’s raised scythe and tearing the skin of his chest, baring the steel underneath. The red-clad teen swipes at his shins as he bounces off the ground, acrobatically tilting his body to dodge both her blade and Clover’s fishing line. What he fails to avoid is Yang’s mean right hook as she rides past on Bumbleby, knocking him down to his knees. Before he can get back up, he finds the Captain’s spear alongside the girl’s scythe pointed at his neck. 

“That was a low blow, you sure fight dirty,” the Augment comments to the silver-eyed girl. “I’m starting to think, Ruby, I may be your father.”

The younger girl’s eyes widen like scoops in utter shock. She has to admit it makes sense - the thought keeping her distracted for long enough for Tyrian’s stinger to click a button on the shaft of her scythe, causing the blade to switch sides, rotating a half-circle around the pole’s axis away from the Augment’s neck and into the soldier’s chest.

Briefly, the sickening sound of metal against metal scrapes their eardrums. Before Clover’s prosthetic heart drops out of its casing, like a pill cleanly popping out of its wrapper. Dropping his weapon in a wet clatter onto the mud, the man collapses heavily, his lively aqua eyes suddenly glassy, staring lifelessly at Ruby’s weapon, at his heart rolling loudly on the slimy floor away from reach. 

Leaning off the side of her speeding bike, Yang rides ahead to catch the mechanical cardiac appendage in her fist. The motorcycle’s rapid passage buffets a light breeze onto their faces - but it’s not fast enough to prevent Tyrian’s enhanced hands from prying the heart out of her grip and bashing her in the head with it. Ruby’s breath catches as the blonde falls off Bumbleby at the impact, tumbling unconscious as the vehicle crashes onto a wall. 

“She’s headstrong,” the REAPER teases mercilessly, inspecting the considerable damage inflicted onto the prosthetic by successive collisions with Ruby’s scythe and Yang’s head: the metal envelope is torn and tattered, misshapen almost beyond recognition, cables ripped and spitting sparks profusely. 

Ruby wants to scream, to shriek wordlessly at the top of her lungs at the sight of Yang and Clover’s collapsed bodies. Her best friend, almost-sister, and her protector, lay inert by her side, by her fault… But the adrenaline that pulses through her is too strong, and ignoring the pain and the aches, she races forward, scythe raised at Tyrian’s white back. She can see the stinger extending toward her, and at present, she doesn’t care, it’s too late to care.

She closes her eyes. A heartbeat later, only the sound of metal hitting metal reaches her ears. 

When her eyelids slide open, she recognises the lean, tall silhouette of the REAPER IV, red eyes staring down at her and torn cape floating in the wind while his broadsword blocks Tyrian’s tail behind his back. 

Qrow Branwen… why did he save her? Why did he come back? 

The newcomer swaps his blade from hand to hand, slashing forward again and again. He moves relentlessly, sword lashing out like a furious bird’s sharp beak. Unable to evade every blow, the Augment crosses both wrist blades to block. Only a hard glint in the crimson eyes warns him before the broadsword converts into its scythe form, the extending polearm pushing Tyrian’s feet sliding on the mud until his back meets the wall. 

“I surrender!” the scorpion-tailed blurts out, eyes flying from the skeptical Qrow and Ruby to the quickly recovering Yang. “I’m outnumbered, and since you’re only arriving now, your newer orders must outweigh those I received? The Consul will be forgiving when he knows I handed myself in willingly!”

Instead of responding, Qrow’s ringed fist punches the other REAPER, a bruise quickly blossoming against his enemy’s hollow cheekbone. The girls help him tie their opponent up with Clover’s fishing line, cranking the voltage to its maximum setting to incapacitate the Augment. But Qrow is already running off, dropping to his knees by the veteran’s side and inspecting the sorry remains of the man’s mechanical heart… He wishes he’d come earlier, he wishes it wouldn’t have taken so long to track down Ruby’s location using the Manticore surveillance footage. He shouldn’t have left the Captain’s side, he should’ve stayed, protected him, made sure he didn’t get hurt, made sure no one got hurt, for the sight of Clover or Ruby suffering are suddenly unbearable, and he can’t recall if he’s ever felt like that so pained so powerless and it’s all his fault… 

“You came back,” Clover murmurs weakly, eyelids fluttering with difficulty. “I knew...”

“Save your breath,” Qrow orders, opening his own chest cavity to power the other man’s body with his heart again. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not… your… fault… I wanted… to trust...”

“Shhh,” the REAPER IV mutters, and deep down he knows it’s not true, he knows his own decisions put Clover in harm’s way, the decisions of the terrified human side of him.

He knows he shouldn’t have left Clover shouldn’t have let him face Tyrian alone, should have taken Ruby somewhere safe before Tyrian could be sent after her should have tasked himself with protecting others, shouldn’t have run away seeing himself as a liability whose presence only pins a target on others’ backs…

“No… you had… orders… it’s… the fault of… those who gave you… those orders...” the veteran sputters.

“You’ll be alright, you have to be… I can keep your blood pumping while we... find a solution for your heart...”

As Qrow connects his heart to the soldier’s chest, Clover’s hand grabs his with surprising strength, all the strength he’s got left, interweaving their fingers tightly as if the world depends on it, on them, on the searing contact between their palms. In the middle of his hand, Qrow’s sensors detect something small, hard, cold, pressed against his skin, like a pin or some kind of metal trinket the veteran wants to give him… for luck? 

No it can’t be up to luck now it’s not too late it’s not possible probabilities are dancing before his eyes and it will not happen should not happen cannot happen… He wants to bend down and kiss the man, kiss him one last time but this isn’t right can’t be won’t be it can’t already be the last time it can’t mean kissing him goodbye it can’t mean that won’t mean that shouldn’t mean that… 

“... watch out...” Clover breathes weakly, and the red-eyed REAPER only catches a glimmer of familiar purple liquid filling a clear syringe, before Tyrian’s half-robot fingers press open a metal compartment at the nape of Qrow’s neck, revealing an orifice into which the syringe’s needle fits perfectly. 

“Did you think I would fight you up front, Qrow? When it’s so easy to pretend to surrender, knock those girls out with the electric fishing line, and trick you instead? So gullible, all of you!”

Tyrian’s bellowing boisterously, but Qrow can’t pay attention anymore. For the full syringe content is injected into him, and the violet ELIXIR drug quickly pours down his spine, down each vein, each artery of his whole body, scalding, freezing, a sickeningly familiar sensation… Gravity takes control, and Qrow falls, but before he hits the ground, he drifts…

And falls further, plummeting always, always, through the vacuum. Everything is bleak, everything is too brimming with light like the Atlas sky before the rain, all around him. He’s falling upwards, soaring downwards, and he doesn’t know which direction gravity is pulling him, like a bird trapped in a cyclone’s eye. The towers of the city fly past his eyes, futuristic, beautiful, glistening with vivid holograms, each one as bright as his most emotional memories formed over the last few days. But the towers are melting up, melting down, like candles burning away until there is nothing left of them, until there is only ash, from dust to dust, and he falls into the dust…

Everything is black, everything is too dark for him to distinguish anything… he’s in a tunnel, falling through a tunnel, and only a dim light flickers at the end… But it’s a safe place, a dark haven where he doesn’t remember anything, where he’s blissfully let go of all memory so he doesn’t have to worry about anything, doesn’t have anything to lose, to mourn… So he’s afraid of the light, of what it might bring, afraid of falling, falling always…

Without the machinery supporting it and the Judge overseeing it, the ELIXIR procedure is incomplete, and Qrow can still hear sounds surrounding him, weakly in the background. He can hear voices, footsteps, he can feel the dirt, the wind and water against his skin. 

He can feel it, just barely, when the rain begins to fall. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note:   
> Tyrian: RUBY I AM YOUR FATHER  
> Ruby: NOOOOOOOOOO  
> Who do you think are Ruby’s parents? Place your bets in the comments below! Yes, Bumbleby is a vehicle that can turn into a giant robot like… Bumblebee? Like the transformer? ;) (it becomes important later)  
> I can say preemptively that we’re not halfway through the story yet, and Clover still has a lot to do, so he’s not dying now. There will be multiple deaths, because it’s not a cyberpunk dystopian story if there’s no deaths, so not all of the (main) characters are safe, but Clover can’t die now (and you know it would break my heart to kill him off). Also, Zwei lives. ZWEI LIVES, I PROMISE. Nuff said. Next chapter will be posted on the usual day aka late Wednesday/early Thursday. Until then, stay hydrated and posted xx


	5. Rainfall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Worldbuilding, ahoy!

“What did you do to him?” Ruby shrieks as she slowly recovers from the electric shock of Clover’s weapon. 

“Oh, nothing more than he goes through every other week. Just a routine ELIXIR procedure.” Tyrian smirks triumphantly. “Nothing compared to what I’ll do to _you_.”

“Take me to Atlas,” she girl pleads, “and do of me what you want. But take Clover somewhere where he can get help.”

“You’re in no position to bargain, _daughter_ of mine... But you do remind me of something I must do.”

A dangerous light dances in his gaze as he approaches the Captain’s fallen form, ripping apart the cables that connected his torso to Qrow’s heart before digging further into Clover’s chest cavity. Tyrian’s bony fingers fiddle with the wires and the casing, slowly burying his hand deeper and deeper where the soldier’s heart was until his wrist blades sink into the unconscious veteran’s skin, parting through metal and flesh.

And then the rain begins to fall. 

Ruby’s tears are rolling down her cheeks, but it doesn’t matter, it ceases to matter now. No one will see her cry, not even herself, in fact she can’t even feel it anymore. She can’t feel anything anymore, the pain, the grief, the shame, the liquid coldness pouring down her skin.

And she notices it… it’s not just raining water, it’s raining _people_. 

People, clad in black like ninjas, are jumping down the buildings, dangling from ropes, agile as alleycats that always land on the balls of their feet. Each of them wears a mask, a different animal mask, yet all are similarly white as bone, marked with red, red as blood, and black, black as night. Steel appendages sometimes emerge from their dark outfits, metal ears, metal tails, metal wings. Augments - all following their Queen, the cat-masked, black-haired girl who stands recognisable to all, for her hologram has been plastered on political flyers through each nook and cranny of the city. 

“Your Majesty,” Tyrian bows mockingly, easily shaking Ruby off his back. 

The Queen lifts her mask over her hair, revealing a surprisingly youthful face, looking barely older than Yang herself, golden eyes calm but determined under the metallic cat ears framing her face. Her silhouette stands tall before Ruby and Tyrian’s crouched bodies, her coat cutting a shadow against the backdrop of brightly coloured, rain-streaked city lights, switching on as the sky rapidly darkens above them. 

“Tyrian Callows. You have violated the code of the Augments. An Augment should not steal or willingly damage another’s Augmentation. You already have your own, your stinger. You shouldn't take another’s heart.”

“But I’m a REAPER! Your code doesn’t apply to me!”

“We Augments are already seen as second-class citizens in Atlas. The law of Atlas applies discrimination and grants different rights to REAPERS and Augments compared to the rest of the population. But the code of the Augments does not, and you are one of us.”

“And how is _he_ an Augment anyway?” Tyrian points disdainfully to the Captain’s lifeless body. 

“His heart is the same as my ears, or your tail. He’s been through his own trials to earn it, and it’s a reminder of a past life, an integral part of who he is.”

“Semantics,” the REAPER VI spits. 

“Then why don’t you fight us over semantics?” she challenges, drawing a katana from behind her back. 

His eyes scan the Augment group - they’re two dozens at least, all armed, and he’s beaten and battered from fighting Clover, Qrow, and the kids. He may revel in pain, feeling and causing it, but his self-preservation instinct still wins out, so he turns tail and flees like a wild creature into the still young night. 

“You’re Blake Belladonna?” Yang mumbles in shock, “Can you do something to keep him alive? Something about _this_?”, she implores holding up the former soldier’s ruined prosthetic.

“Take him to a stasis pod,” Blake orders, as a handful of Augments obey, “Sister Trifa will have a look at his heart, she’s been weaving all our Augmentations and will know what to do.”

“What about the REAPER?” Ruby demands, staring at Qrow’s still motionless body as she pulls up her hood to protect herself from the rain. “Can we take him to safety? He’s saved our lives.”

“We can’t know for sure why a REAPER would ever do that, go against orders and fight another REAPER to save you. But we know for sure that when he wakes up from the ELIXIR, he’ll have forgotten everything, even his… surprising desires and motivations to help you. All he’ll remember is his mission, and if his orders imply hurting the Captain or you, he’ll do it. So he’s a liability, we can’t take him with us. He’ll probably be fine when he wakes up, he does go through the ELIXIR procedure every two weeks and come out of it unharmed.”

“Yeah, he’ll be right as rain,” Yang grumbles unhappily, unable to counter the sound argument, and instead only watching as the masked individuals carry Clover away on a stretcher. 

“You two, follow me,” the Queen beckons Yang and Ruby. 

* * *

“He’ll be okay?” Ruby prompts as the Captain’s being lifted into the stasis pod, its gentle white light illuminating the room eerily from below. 

Some slight, silent Augments, hardly larger or older-looking than the red-caped girl, hand her healing bandages before bashfully stepping away, eyes fixed on the ground beneath their masks. Ruby quickly wraps the band-aids around her wounded arm, her bruised ribs, her damaged ankle. 

“Yes, his vitals are maintained stable while Trifa can tend to his heart,” Blake answers, fidgeting through some holographic displays mentoring Clover’s physiological parameters by the side of the pod. “This is what we sometimes use in some Augmentation procedures, if they turn out to have… complications.”

“But… why? Why go through Augmentation if it risks someone’s life?” the red-caped girl asks, feeling suddenly stupid. “I know it’s your religion and all, but...”

Ruby can’t help but repress a shudder at the idea of such a gruesome, possibly life-threatening surgical procedure applied to a perfectly healthy person to… _enhance_ them, as a rite of passage in the name of some faith? After all, there must have been reasons why the government banned the Augmentation procedure on abled persons, forcing the Augments to live underground to perpetuate their cult away from the watchful eyes and sharp claws of the surveillance Manticores. 

“I can explain,” the Queen smiles warmly, painting a strange expression on her usually solemn traits in the chill unnatural lighting. “Yang, do you think you could help Sister Trifa with the Augmentation? I have to show Ruby something… your name’s Yang, right?”

“Yup, your Maj,” the blonde nods quickly with a bow, an ice pack pressed to her battered temple, before following some Augments out of the stasis room.

“Ruby, come with me.”

“... right away, your Maj… ahem, your Majesty.”

Carefully avoiding the Augment figurehead’s amber eyes glaring daggers at her, Ruby walks in her footsteps down a narrow corridor, lit by mismatched paper and fabric lanterns hanging from the ceiling, of motley shapes, sizes, and colours. The Augment city lives underground beneath Mantle, in accordance with the urban legend, but it remains astoundingly well-lit and warmed by geothermal energy. Its map follows an obscure web of interconnected tunnels, blood-red wooden gates covered in road signs delimiting street and district boundaries, each associated with different painted symbols. Ruby shivers at the faint oscillation of the multitude of masks dangling off the gates, each portraying an animal face like a macabre hunting trophy, staring at her languidly with empty, dead eyes. 

“Why did you save Yang and me?” she asks quietly in the near-silence, only disturbed by the sound of falling rain at ground level just above their heads. 

“When the Captain wakes up, he’ll want to find you. And he’ll only risk his life if you’re not by his side. He’s technically an Augment, so it’s my duty to protect him as Queen.”

“How did you become Queen? Not that you can’t handle yourself, but you still look pretty young, I mean maybe you’ve just aged really well, but…”

“I am a Queen, not an elected Consul. My father was King before me, before my parents left for space.”

“For space? That’s so cool! Where did they go? To found a new colony for the Augments, where your people can live in peace away from our government’s discrimination? Why didn’t you follow them off-planet then? And what do you mean by ‘technically’ an Augment? You mentioned something about facing trials and I’m not too sure I caught your meaning so I thought I might ask… I’m babbling, aren’t I?”

“Yes, you are.”

“Well, you’re not the most chatty.”

“Really.”

Looking down at the crimson rimming of her dark boots in the surrounding semi-obscurity, Ruby follows Blake further down the tunnels. Amidst the echoes of rainfall, the black-haired Augment’s footsteps are fast and regular, small heels clicking almost imperceptibly against the uneven floor. Blake moves like a shadow among shadows, like a feline predator in the night, the lantern-lit darkness of the underground city serving as her natural environment. The shoulders and tails of her coat are worn by the weight she has to carry, the weight of her choices and responsibilities, rendering her so cold and solemn even at her young age. Her expression remains mysteriously guarded, with the strange grace of a statue of dust and ash turned to stone by humidity and rain. 

“It’s here,” the Queen voices flatly. “Welcome to our sanctuary.”

As they pass through a series of smaller bright red portals, the girls enter a large, obscure space, vaulted ceilings supported by tall, curved ivory columns like the ribcage of a monstrous whale. From overhead, scrolls of rice paper hang carrying calligraphies in which flowing inky curves writhe like birds about to take flight. Each column is marked with a series of undecipherable symbols, each different from the next, sinewy lines connecting scattered dots like constellations from different skies, different galaxies. Tables and chairs throne in the centre of the airy room, loaded with candles and incense, but designed in unlikely forms and covered in mysterious switches and contraptions, as if fitted to large, misshapen bodies that aren’t human. 

“It’s… a crashed SALEM spaceship,” Ruby realises shakily. 

“It’s a reminder of the past. Not just of the hive mind space race that almost defeated us and caused the Fall, but of our past. Life must have come to Earth from space. Humans are but stardust, remnants of more ancient species from far away galaxies, of creatures and civilisations that may be extinct, that we don’t remember. The sanctuary serves as a reminder that we’re much smaller than we think, that we’re not alone, that we’re not the first incarnation of life in the universe even though we can’t remember who came before us, and we won’t be the last incarnation.”

“The myth of reincarnation?” Ruby wonders as she follows Blake around a dashboard-turned-altar supporting diverse food and paper offerings. 

“It’s not a myth, it’s a law of nature. Nothing is made, nothing is lost, all transforms, always, endlessly. Burn down a forest, and you’ll get ashes fertile enough for new vegetation to grow after the next rainfall. Come here and take a look.”

The large device at the front of the ship looks like a rudder from ancient boats, a circular wooden wheel with twelve evenly spaced spokes radiating from the centre, each marked with a different animal head painted in white and red.

“Was this used for navigation by SALEM? And do the paintings represent the cycle of life?”

“Probably. And they represent past incarnations our people may have had, some of the animals they may have been in previous lives. Each life begins with birth, with suffering, and ends with death, with suffering. But between death and rebirth, one must drink from the potion of forgetfulness, to let go of memories of past life, or past suffering.”

“Like the ELIXIR procedure the REAPERs go through?”

“Unfortunately, the government must have taken their inspiration from our legends when designing the ELIXIR, while the law continues to persecute the people of our culture, the people who still have faith.”

“And your people want to break the cycle? End the suffering?”

“Yes, and no,” Blake smiles sadly, “you, Ruby, believe you’re some kind of chosen one, some messiah born from those who should not be able to give birth, with the power and the destiny to break the wheel. No, we want to escape, not by destroying the cycle of reincarnation, but by remembering past lives, to learn from past lives’ mistakes. If we know of our past faults, we won’t repeat them, and that can ease our suffering.”

“Is that what the Augmentations represent? A commemoration of past lives?”

“When a child of our faith comes of age, they go through a rite of passage. They drink the shattermoon tea, and then they’re sent through the entrails of the sanctuary, from another entrance, to wonder in that dark maze until their eyes get accustomed to the obscurity, and they can find their way here. When they arrive here, they’re so blinded by the light they can’t see much, just enough to find and spin the wheel,” she demonstrates with a flick of her wrist, “and stop it by catching one of the spokes. The one they catch symbolises the animal they were in their past lives, and they are allowed to get a bionic enhancement representing this animal.”

“And you got the cat. Did you choose ears, or was it imposed by the wheel?“

“Hearing loss is hereditary in my family, from my mother’s side. I always knew I wanted ears, no matter what animal’s, even before I came of age. This was my way of enhancing my body to ease my suffering.”

“So the Captain’s heart is technically an Augmentation because he needs it to live, like you need your ears, and he must have survived dangerous trials to earn it?”

“Yes. I don’t have that much power as Queen, the Ancient Ones hold many of the responsibilities, but I do get to decide whom to consider as an Augment, as one of us, as one who should be protected.”

“And me? Why are you protecting me, and why want to talk to me here?”

“You like to think that everything’s about you, self-proclaimed REAPER’s daughter,” the Queen scolds dryly. “With everything that’s going on right now and all the crowds watching you fight two REAPERs successively and be protected by the legendary Captain, you must feel like a prize to be won, and for many parties, you are. Holding you here would give me and my people power, but it would also put a target on our backs, attract more REAPERs who’ll come here and try to take you. So you understand I won’t keep you forever, only until the Captain recovers. No, I was hoping you’d help an old friend of mine figure out about her past life.”

“How?”

“She arrived by a rainy night, not unlike you, seeking refuge among our people. Like you, she was accompanied by a friend, a red-haired boy, heavily injured. He didn’t make it, but she did. She didn’t remember much from her past, only some words, some gestures. She wasn’t born among our people, but she worked hard and diligently and became the guardian of our sanctuary and a teacher to our youth.”

Blake leads Ruby to a smaller room, the floor covered in thick carpets and the doors concealed by translucent curtains. Inside, a rather slight woman with a long, dark red ponytail holds ignited incense sticks while she moves along a complex choreography with practised ease, tentatively copied by younger disciples behind her. Wisps of smoke circle past her face, but she takes no notice, eyelids shut as she spins rapidly, stops precisely, the fiery tips of the incense tracing crimson light spirals around her. 

“Sister Ilia says the dance helps her remember,” the Queen murmurs not to disturb the meditative silence, “and I find she moves like you… even your eyes look similar...”

But the red-caped girl isn’t listening anymore, entranced by the rhythmic flow of the dance, by its eerie familiarity. Before Blake can protest, she draws her scythe in lieu of incense and joins in, swinging her weapon from side to side as if to fend off opponents as Ilia traces identical infinity signs with her incense. The Queen watches in puzzlement as Ruby’s martial moves exactly mirror Ilia’s meditative choreography, as the silver-eyed girl follows flawlessly with evident practice the dance of this woman she’s never met before. Next they saunter, twisting in mid-air like gymnasts, Ilia’s flames orbiting around her airborne body while Ruby’s blade spins out rapid circles to recreate her favourite combat-opening move. 

“Who taught you to fight like that?” Blake mutters bewildered, but the alleged REAPER’s daughter seems to stumble on her feet, blinking confusedly. 

This is usually when Ruby collides with her opponent, and she can’t remember what gesture comes next. But as she watches Ilia, it becomes obvious, as if it had always been a part of her. Imitating the redhead, she lands elastically, holding her weapon back while her open palm extends forward - almost touching Ilia’s. Their hands don’t make contact, as if on either side of a mirror, but they stay close enough to one another, remaining perfectly still, to feel each other’s heat. Ilia’s eyelids flutter open, revealing dark steely irises boring straight into Ruby’s similarly silvery eyes. 

“Are you… are you Ruby?”

* * *

And Ruby remembers. 

Only shreds of her past life, like ashes in the wind, remnants of her days before the orphanage. 

They’re moving, breathing in sync, repeating the moves over and over, holding sticks as makeshift weapons. Ilia’s little arms are growing wary, Ruby’s concentration is spreading thin. They’re just kids, but they train to fight every week, every day, as if to become perfect soldiers, the hope and sunshine of their nation. 

Then they’re moving again, but they’re in a doctor’s office, and they go in one at a time. Ruby comes after the red-haired boy leaves, she has to go on a balance, to have a multitude of sensors and recording devices adjusted on her before she can execute the combat moves she dutifully practised all week, while the lab coat clad adults take profuse notes and whisper to one another agitatedly. 

Now they’re moving, but proudly, for an older woman’s violet eyes watch over them benevolently. She appreciates how they press forward with their palms as if trying to force a mountain to budge, how their arms curve upward like a bird’s gentle wing, how they stop cleanly in their tracks like time itself has been paused. Her gloved hands clap gleefully in appraisal for their good work, and then she sees each of them individually. As Ruby approaches her to shake her hand, she can see the white folder she holds against her heart, a single word printed across the cover. Ruby can’t read yet, she’s still too young, but she recognises the first letter as the same as the third in her name, a B. 

Again they’re moving, but erratically, running for their lives. The dorms, the training rooms, the medical facilities are all on fire, and the violet-eyed, fair-haired, tan-skinned woman is leading them out, turning back regularly to make sure everyone can follow, to make sure she can save everyone. Ruby doesn’t understand why she’s so agitated, why all the staff is so panicked, for the kids remain calm and stand in neat rows. 

“Judge Hill!” a man’s voice calls through the flame, causing the woman to turn around. 

She shouts something back, something Ruby can’t catch over the sound of everything burning, everything collapsing. 

“Ruby, _run_!” the woman yells, and she runs, the fastest she’s ever run, until she’s just a blur of red against red flames, like a storm of scattering petals. 

But then she can’t run any more, because suddenly she’s alone, and where is everyone? She hears someone yell, a girl whose clothes are ablaze, and only through the colourless eyes she recognises Ilia. She throws her cape at her, trying to smother the fire, but it’s too late, already too late…

* * *

“Is that all, are you sure?” Ilia prompts quietly, at which Ruby only nods. 

“Ilia had severe burns when she arrived among us,” Blake comments, consistent with Ruby's memories. “We had serious work done to her skin even before she figured out her animal was the chameleon.”

“So I wasn’t the only one,” the red-clad girl exhales shakily. “You were one of us, too.”

“But what were we? REAPERs’ offspring raised to become the perfect warriors? The perfect weapons, brainwashed from birth by the government?”

“You were test subjects for a programme,” the Queen deduces, “whose name starts with a B.”

“That doesn’t really help,” the redhead sighs. “We only know Judge Hill spearheaded the programme, and that it was probably shut down.”

“Which was why the centre we lived in was destroyed and we all had to run away… or try to,” Ruby finishes. 

“Why us? Why were we test subjects? What do we have in common, and apart from everyone else?”

“I have DNA in common with some of the REAPERs… maybe you do too - the chip!”

The silver-eyed girl’s hands fly to her lips as she realises she left the storage device Clover had given her in the study. 

“The genome sequences are on a chip at my place, they’re highly confidential and Tyrian knows where I live, we can’t let him, the government or anyone else access that information or figure out we have it. I have to -”

“You’re not going anywhere, Ruby,” Blake interrupts coldly. “Too many people know who you are now, and too many people will want to take you, dead or alive, now that Tyrian failed. And before you ask, Yang’s been seen to be associated with you, so she can’t go either.”

“But I can go,” Ilia offers, laying her fingers atop her Queen’s. 

“Ilia… it’s dangerous,” the Augment leader warns heavily, flinching at the touch without retracting her hand, “I know I can’t stop you… but please be safe.”

The redhead’s freckled face flushes into new, rosy colours at Blake’s words, but she simply nods and speaks with a formal bow:

“I promise, your Majesty. You know I can be discreet.”

With that, as Ruby can only stare in awe, her skin changes to a darker tone, blending in perfectly into the background until her form turns as transparent as the phantomatic curtains surrounding them.

* * *

By the time Ilia leaves Ruby’s workshop, the rain is falling again. Clover’s chip is warm in her pocket, like a promise, a potential answer to years living in the unknown, in the dark, a shadow among shadows. One of her hands distractedly pets the head of a small corgi huddling under the desk by her side. Storms in Mantle last hours on end, so she can’t just wait out the rain; taking a deep breath, she pushes the mangled metal door open with her boot. 

Ilia blinks in surprise at the sight that greets her - the tempest outside must have masked the sound of amassing footsteps while she was fumbling around that mess of an office searching for the precious item. As a result, she doesn’t expect the crowd of angry humans, pitchforks and other primitive weapons in hand, standing outside the door and blocking her passage. She reflexively turns near-invisible, her outline only visible where cold water droplets collide with her hard prosthetic skin, creating an aura of stark white sprinkled around her silhouette. 

“Freak!” somebody cries out before charging at her. 

“Didn’t know the REAPER’s daughter was such a freak,” someone else spits as they join in. 

Ilia considers shifting back to her usual colour not to terrify them, but they’re already too densely gathered for her to push her way through. 

“You’re the REAPER’s offspring, right? The one who attracts damage and destruction wherever she goes?” a vindictive voice yells in her general direction, to which she wishes to deny, but can’t tell how much of the statement is wrong. 

“You’re such a disgrace! You should be ashamed of yourself, freak!”

“Yeah, Earth is overpopulated! We don’t need REAPERs to be able to produce progeny too!”

“You’re a disgrace to the balance! To Atlas and Mantle! Kill the freak!”

“Yeah, kill the freak!”

“Kill the freak!”

The voices are too close, too loud, as the fanatics pull in closer, murderous intentions in their eyes. And Ilia doesn’t want to fight, but she has to. With an agile leap, she tackles a tall man onto his companions, watching them collapse like dominos while careful not to inflict lethal blows. A heartbeat later, she’s already back on her feet, executing a roundhouse kick before jumping over a pitchfork swinging at her. She punches the weapon’s wielder in the nose, wrenching the pitchfork out of her grasp as she falls and spins it around in quick circles, clearing a perimeter through the crowd around her. Streaks of droplets emanate from her invisible body as she moves, ripples dancing in the puddles every time she steps, every time she bounces. She rears her fist just enough to knock back an attacker with the butt of the weapon, before slamming it into the ground vertically. She swings around the pole in a full circle, boots meeting a dozen faces on the way before she lands, bending back to avoid the swing of a baseball bat.

As she quickly straightens herself, reaching out her palm to deflect the bat into another opponent’s face, a sudden impact catches her in the back. She tumbles into the nearest puddle face first, struggling to catch her breath in muddy water. She can only cough and scream in pain as the spikes of a pitchfork plant into her back, as a crown of booted feet quickly close in, kicking her with all the scorn and despair they have for the REAPERs, for the government, for life, for suffering, for the universe itself. 

She’d taken down at least two dozen humans, but now they’re too many, too many desperate people taking their frustration out on her, and she can’t get up. A person’s full weight pouncing onto her leg splinters the prized chip in her pocket, reducing it to a myriad of fragments. She wants to scream, but she can’t even breathe, all air was kicked out of her body, and black spots prance before her eyes. A sickening crack echoes from her arm, and darkness slowly fills her field of vision, flowing in like dirty water.

Through the darkness, lightning flashes. First across the sky overhead, then undulating around like a lizard’s tongue catching its prey. The crowd shrieks in terror, falling like flies where the lighting bolt touches them. Ilia looks up as the remainder of her attackers start to disperse, and sees something flying toward her. She raises a battered hand to catch, and in her palm she immediately knows what to do. It’s a weapon, and she can fight with anything, she’s a weapon trained since birth, she’s executed combat moves with a mere stick over and over. She slashes rapidly on either side of her, the lightning lashing out like a whip from the weapon, fiercely cutting through the air and dispatching the leftover crowd. 

Catching her breath as her heartbeat slows to a steady pace, she attempts to stand up from her crouched position, only for the pain in her leg to bring her back down. Glancing up, she sees the strong hand held out to her by her saviour, the weapon’s owner who’d lent her the electrified rope. A small smile graces her lips as she recognises the pallid glow of a mechanical heart through thick bandages and the aqua eyes looking down on her kindly. 

* * *

“Ruby… I’m sorry.” 

Ilia clutches the remnants of the chip against her heart, each shard sharp against her drenched fingers. She doesn’t know how long she’s been sitting there, silently, numbly, the pouring, thundering rain above easily made one lose track of time. She doesn’t know when Ruby arrived, exactly, but she knows half her field of vision is obscured by the crimson cape, painstakingly protecting them both from the rain - and it’s going to be just fine.

“No, don’t be sorry,” the red-clad girl mutters. “At least the contents of the chip won’t fall into the wrong hands.”

And Ruby knows it’s selfish, knows it’s unfair that Ilia didn’t get to see the REAPERs’ sequences, didn’t get to know about her parentage. But there’s nothing she can do, they can’t unbreak it, all the bridges burned down to a point of no return. 

“Blake will be mad at you,” the Augment girl remarks without aggression. 

“She’s already angry. But you took too long out there, so the Captain and Yang decided to sneak out with me,” she gestures at Bumbleby parked around the corner.

By the bike, Ilia catches the unexpected, but not unwelcome sight of Clover and Yang enthusiastically greeted by a black and white dog jumping up and down before their knees. She sees Ruby exchange a hesitant look with the blonde, who nods encouragingly, before gazing at the Captain whose expression remains inscrutable. 

“I won’t leave it like this, Ilia. I promise. I got to know part of the truth about my past, and I won’t stop before you can find the truth about your past, until we can both figure out the full truth. Whatever it takes. Even if it means finding Judge Hill, and whomever she reports to.”

“Robyn Hill is directly under the command of Consul Ironwood,” the Captain intervenes. “She’s been serving under him since the days of the war, we knew each other back then… in a way. She’s now responsible for overseeing the ELIXIR procedure within the REAPER program, her facility is just below Ironwood’s in the Atlas tower.” 

“Then we’ll talk to her, and we’ll talk to Ironwood.”

“This is an important decision, Ruby,” Clover comments, a benevolent smile playing at his lips without reaching his eyes, eliciting a wary grey glare from the chameleon-skinned teen. “Please take your time. I don’t want to force your hand. It’s easy to see there’s no turning back, and the only way left to defend ourselves may well be attack. But I can’t force you to serve as bait to draw in the REAPERs I want to defeat. I can’t force you to parade as the figurehead for some revolution against the government if you want no part in it. Whatever you choose, I’ll stand with you, you have my word on that. But waging war on the Atlas government, us against them, is a big choice to make.”

Yang leans over to whisper into Clover’s ear, causing his chiselled shoulders to drop ever so slightly. Around them, garish hologram ads and street lights bleed obliquely into parallel raindrops, falling heavily. It’s raining just as much as it was seconds ago, but the deafening silence feels quieter, more fragile somehow, as if awaiting for them to shatter it, to make choices that’ll set things irreversibly into motion.

“I’ve already decided, Captain. Wherever I run, wherever I hide… they’ll come for me, and hurt all those who stand in their way. Like they’ve hurt Ilia, Qrow, and you. And I can’t stand watching that happen, watching anyone else get hurt. So I’ll fight back, for justice, for the truth, even if that means waging war on the government. There’s no turning back now, and whatever it takes, the only way is to move forward.”

* * *

When he wakes, Qrow doesn’t remember anything. He only recalls his name, his function, and his mission. Find the girl, lure out the Captain… So what is he doing there? 

Why is he lying on the ground in a deserted alleyway as a storm threatens to burst out through the clouds? Why did he go through the ELIXIR under such circumstances? It feels unusual emerging from it without a Judge there to proceed through the questions to verify the operation was successful. Ironically, that only leaves him with more questions. 

Rather than answers, all he finds is a cold metal trinket nested in the middle of his palm. He inspects it with his enhanced visual sensors and recognises it as a data storage chip, with a short message scribbled onto a small white label. Who even still writes in pencil these days? It’s almost adorable. Narrowing his eyes slightly, he deciphers the note: _thanks for the memories_. 

In lieu of a signature, he only finds, pencilled beneath the four words, the drawing of a four-leafed clover.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: This chapter was weird, not too weird hopefully. I love Ilia and while she doesn’t get much more than a cameo here, I hope I did her justice. Next chapter we’re back to Qrow doing more stuff, Clover also doing things. Who do you think Ruby’s parents are? Place your bets. Planning to post on Saturday (now that there's no more episodes on Saturdays, I thought of picking up the pace, plus quarantine is boring in the lonely sense DON'T WORRY I AM FINE), stay warm and tuned xx


	6. Spark

“What’s the date?”

“122 years, five months, twenty-seven days, seven hours, six minutes, and 42.29 seconds after the Fall.”

“Who are you?”

“Qrow Branwen, half-human, half-android, REAPER, fourth of my kind, under the orders of Consul James Ironwood of Atlas.”

“Correct. I will read a series of words. For each word please reply with the first word that comes to mind.”

“Yes, Judge Hill.”

The Judge fidgets with her monitor settings, configuring the holographic displays such that the REAPER’s vitals stop flickering in and out of the display range while Qrow nervously scratches the back of his head. 

“War?”

“Suffering.”

“Suffering?”

“Dream.”

“Raven?”

“Unkindness.”

“Birth?”

“Spark.”

“Death?”

“Memory.”

“Child?”

“Hope.”

Robyn Hill takes a deep breath before switching off her screens and the ELIXIR equipment.

“Qrow Branwen… I think it’s time for you and I to have a discussion.”

* * *

_ Two days earlier _

Weiss died. Again. She lets out an indignant “hey!!!” at the holographic opponent who’d had the nerve to stab her through the back just as her Scroll was ringing, again. Now, if only she could train her fencing in peace, without so many people bothering her and trying to reach her! She lunges forward furiously, stabbing another projection with her rapier. The silhouette shatters at her feet into a rain of pixels as she finally picks up her Scroll.

“Greetings,” she snaps, lifting her black fencing mask over her face, delicate silver strands cascading down her shoulders. “And no, before you ask, I don’t want a date with you, neither do I want a rematch. Last time I checked, I was never defeated by you and Bumbleby, because guess what, I was never defeated  _ at all _ .” 

“You’re cute when you’re angry, Snow Pea,” Yang replies easily, Weiss practically able to hear her winking. “But no, that’s not why I called.”

“So what? Do you need help? Money?” 

The white-haired Atlesian swivels around to face two other silhouettes attempt to strike her from behind, parrying in a flurry of slashes before thrusting her blade through one’s heart and disarming the other with a flick of her wrist. 

“Money, no? But help, yes? A little?”

“For what? You got in trouble with the law? You did realise bot fighting was illegal when you tried to start your  _ career _ , right?”

“Kind of. I need you to help me overthrow the Atlas government.”

At a faint rustling sound behind her, Weiss blocks her blade pointed backward under her armpit and firmly steps back, impaling an enemy through the chest. She doesn’t even turn to look as the faceless form crumbles behind her.

“You  _ what _ .”

“I can explain. My sister… uh… My best friend has good reasons to think she’s a REAPER’s daughter. And the REAPERs haven’t been leaving her alone about it lately, so she’s going to confront the Consul about it in Atlas. Don’t worry, we’ve got a whole team supporting us on this, led by a… war veteran turned vigilante superhero, of sorts? Anyway, we’ll just need some help with taking care of the REAPERs that’ll try to stop us.”

As Yang explains, Weiss dances around her opponents, blocking an overhead blow, slitting a holographic throat, kicking a hologram with a pristine white boot, and spinning around to toss her blade through a disarmed enemy’s forehead. 

“That’s one way to plan a date,” the fencer hisses. 

“I thought you didn’t want to go on a date.”

Her sword sunk to the hilt into an immaterial foe’s stomach, the Atlesian rips off her helmet to bash another hologram in the head with it. The stunned enemy takes a step back, giving her time to extract her sword and slash him from hip to shoulder in one fluid motion.

“And what made you think I’d want to go on… whatever this is? A suicide mission?”

“You’re into bot fighting, so you must have a dark streak under all that white,” Yang shrugs. “Now, almost winning in the third division of an underground tournament isn’t really the most consequential way to rebel against your father. Jacques Schnee basically runs Atlas, everybody knows that. Ironwood’s a good military man, but he’s just that, he takes care of military things while your father puppets everything else, the economy, the social system… Heck, daddy’s even got a REAPER at his own beck and call. What I’m saying is that I’m offering you a chance, and offering you support to make a difference and clear your family name.”

At the REAPER’s mention, Yang would have sworn she could see something break in Weiss’s composure - before she promptly schools her expression to her previous regal facade.

“As much as that sounds appealing, how could I clear all the bad deeds of my father just by helping a ragtag group of rebels who think they can practise guerilla warfare in Atlas?” 

“You’ll be remembered as the one who took down REAPERs, with the mighty sword of your loyal Armagigas. You’ll go down in history as a hero, until the day everyone forgets your dad was ever a corrupt businessman and politician.”

“Let me think about it.”

“Yeah, finish your fencing training first.”

“In case you haven’t noticed,” Weiss retorts, “it’s already finished and I’m victorious.  _ Again _ .”

As she speaks, she stabs a fallen foe with her rapier held in both hands, barely looking as he crumbles to dust at her feet.

“And by the way, it’s fine.”

“Really?” Unlike the poised Schnee, Yang can barely contain her satisfaction.

“I accept, but under one condition. I get to face Arthur Watts, that REAPER that answers to my father and carries out his misdeeds, the one that ‘ _ silenced _ ’ my sister when she got in the way, and I get to kill him.”

“Watts killed your sister? I thought Winter Schnee died of an incurable… oh...”

“Do you accept my condition, Yang?”

“All good for me, I don’t see Watts the problem in the condition you just proposed.”

“Yang!” she groans with impossible elegance as a rosy hue tints her pale cheeks, “you are insufferable.”

***

“Let’s recap,” Clover says, both hands pressed against the mess of maps covering the wooden table, “when the virus takes effect and the surveillance cameras come offline, our ship will be allowed to land...”

“... at the Consul’s personal spacedock,” a short woman interrupts, tawny wiry arms crossed over her chest with an impatient sigh that tousles her rebellious streak of golden hair. “We’ve been over this already, boss. Then, we’re going to hack into the system to lure the REAPERs out to places we can fight them in.”

“The colosseum, the ballroom, and the atrium,” the Captain finishes, pointing at the corresponding locations on the map. “That’s what a recap is for, Harriet, making sure everyone’s on the same page. Especially the newcomers.”

He gestures to Yang, artfully draping herself around the back of the chair where Ruby sits cross-legged, and to Blake and Ilia whispering to one another from a corner of the meeting room. 

“Before we move on to the specifics, I want to stress that the goal of the mission is to confront Hill and Ironwood and figure out the truth on the project code-named B. Our purpose isn’t to destroy all of Atlas on our path, nor is it to kill all of the REAPERs. Bear in mind that there are people in Atlas who are just following orders, like we once were. We shouldn't make an attempt on their lives if we don’t have to.”

“I get protecting people,” a male Augment reflects, awkwardly running long fingers through his dark brown hair, “but didn’t we want to end the REAPERs?”

The brunette’s gaze darts nervously to the Augment Queen. After some convincing, she had allowed the rest of Clover’s team of veterans into the underground city for their strategy meeting, so they could safely be joined by Ruby, Ilia, and Yang. Clover and his four acolytes had been an elite squadron in the war against SALEM, before the government cast aside all human military, dismissed them as too scarred and unstable to serve and ended their commissions. They’d continued to work together after their official disbanding, raiding official convoys, hacking classified information, and even attacking REAPERs, but they’d never acted out a plan of this scale - never attempted to take Atlas by storm and face Ironwood himself. 

“I did, Marrow,” Clover voices slowly. “Now it depends what the Consul tells us. If it turns out they’re test subjects to the same kind of experiment Ruby and Ilia were subjected to… not if, but when we get the evidence from Ironwood himself, the one who should take the fall is the Consul, not the REAPERs. Our top priority is getting Ruby to face Hill or Ironwood, and I will escort her myself, even if I lose my life doing so. Any questions?”

“Why now?” a quiet, ivory-skinned man wonders. “Are we ready yet? It’s been years we’ve had that virus you mention, that virus designed take down the whole Atlas network, and yet we’ve been waiting in the shadows. So why now suddenly? Shouldn’t we take more time to gather more support from the general population?”

“Unfortunately, we don’t have that much time anymore. Times have changed, and something has been set in motion. After the REAPER IV let Ruby go, and the REAPER VI tried to take her and was forced to run away, the state will do everything in its power to get her. And Ilia figured out yesterday the government isn’t the only one after Ruby. And none of these parties will stop until they get what they want. We don’t have any more time to lose. And once the truth is out, the general population will know of it, our cause will finally gain the support it deserves.”

“So what now, Cap? You finally managed to infect the system with the virus? Pietro made that for us years ago...” a burly dark-skinned female prompts, closing in behind Clover.

“Pietro Polendina? PENNY’s creator?” Yang interrupts, dumbfounded. “Wow, I knew everyone in bot fighting had a dark streak, but I had no idea he was that much of a big deal...”

“He made the virus years ago,” the larger woman continues animatedly, “and we’ve never managed to implant it into the Atlas system. It needs to infect a computer that’s central enough to the architecture of their network… how can you be so sure that we’ll manage this time?”

“We’ve already managed. It’s just a matter of time,” the Captain’s eyes flicker to his Scroll, “just a matter of days until it’s fully effective and paralyses the communications network of all Atlas. You’ll just have to await my signal. Trust me, Elm, has my luck ever failed us?”

Marrow tilts his head, brow furrowing slightly, but Elm just nods formally.

“No, sir.”

“Very well. Now that’s all clarified, let’s get back to the specifics. We’ll draw in the REAPERs where we have enough space to fight them. The atrium, the ballroom, and the colosseum.”

Clover’s index designates the locations successively, each touch releasing a rotating holographic representation of each setting. 

“We’ve taken on REAPERs before, killed two, and forced two to flee,” he gestures to a projection of four busts labeled ‘Tock’, ‘Vernal’, ‘Tyrian’, and ‘Hazel’, the first two grayed out. “But they’re not to be underestimated, for this time we’ll have to take on multiple REAPERs at once. So we’ll split into teams.”

“Taiyang Xiao Long and Hazel Rainhart are off-planet,” Harriet recalls, “Xiao Long is protecting Consul Ozpin on Titan, and Rainhart is on Mercury with Consul Lionheart. That leaves us with the REAPER VII, Cinder Fall, and...”

“Weiss and I can take care of Watts and Fall,” Yang interrupts with a wave of her hand, her luscious blonde locks bouncing off her shoulders. 

“Really?” Harriet echoes, narrowing her eyes.

“Not that we’re doubting your skill,” Clover amends, “everyone’s seen the bot matches you were in, but we’re just concerned for your safety.”

“When I say Weiss and I, I mean Bumbleby, Armagigas, Weiss, and I against those two REAPERs. With enough space to move around, like in the places you chose, the giant robots are not to be underestimated, and neither Arthur nor Cinder have ever fought against enemies like that.”

“Well, some of my team will back you up. Harriet and Marrow, you’re with Weiss. Elm and Vine, you’re with Yang.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Excellent, which leaves us with Tyrian Callows, whose perimeter isn’t specifically Atlas, but who’ll be called back from Mantle by Ironwood once our virus corrupts their system.”

“I volunteer,” Ruby claims, lifting her hand so fast no one could stop her. 

“No… you’re too valuable,” Clover sighs, hesitation floating in his aqua gaze. “Your priority should be finding Robyn Hill or the Consul himself.”

“Then I can...” Ilia starts, before being similarly dismissed.

“No, you’re hurt,” the Captain looks down at her brand new arm cast, “and don’t forget you’re just as valuable to our cause as Ruby is.”

“Your arm needs time to heal,” Blake insists, “and they’ll need somebody to oversee the operations from afar, control the spread of the virus and use the cameras and doors to the advantage of those on the field.”

“With all due respect, your Majesty, you would perfectly be up to the task. You and your men already managed to scare Tyrian into escaping, after all,” Clover bows courteously, genuine admiration obvious in his tone.

“I am a Queen, not a revolutionary dissident. And you talk of my people, not a squad of mercenaries for hire,” the golden-eyed girl retorts flatly.

“You took Ruby under your protection, and might I add, attempted to prevent her from leaving,” the Captain argues carefully, “You were able to do so only because you had people spying on her, surveying her from afar, from the shadows for a while. You didn’t have to, but you did it because having Ruby by your side increased the influence and leverage of your people. You’d have traded her to the government in exchange for more rights for your people, if you could, we both know it.”

“Blake...” Ruby exhales, comprehension too timid to dawn in her silver orbs as the Queen looks at her blanching, tightening fists, unable to support Clover’s truthful glare. 

“I can’t blame you for your decisions, especially as I owe my life to you.” Clover continues, “I can only urge you to accept the responsibilities for your actions and support Ruby till the end.”

“The needs of the many always come before, and I didn’t have a choice,” Blake finally speaks, the slightest tremor in her regal tone.

The Captain doesn’t answer, instead setting his hands at his hips rather awkwardly, as if the words struck a profound chord within him. A tense silence falls as the audience stares alternatively at the former commanding officer and the Augment monarch.

“You once told me we always have a choice,” Ilia murmurs, reaching towards Blake’s shoulder with her valid hand, but stopping mid-gesture to leave her Queen just a thin envelope of air to herself, enough space to think, to decide, to choose. “And not picking a side, as things are turning out to be, amounts to picking a side. To siding with the faithless government who wants to silence people like Ruby, people like me, people like  _ us _ , against those who want to make things change. I know the Augments haven’t been fighting in the conflicts of the faithless, but the Captain’s right, we’re too deep in to turn back and now’s the chance you have to make a choice for the better.”

Her freckled fingers hover near Blake’s skin like an unspoken question, forcing the Augment leader to eventually break the silence. 

“Ilia… I shouldn’t have let you get attacked, shouldn’t have let Clover save you and use that to influence you. You’re right, it’s too late now. I’ll fight Tyrian, but as a Queen, with my people, and for my people. In exchange, Captain, promise that if you’re ready to take down the government, its laws, and the REAPERs that enforce it, you’ll strive to set up a new law that ensures equal rights for Augments and faithless.”

“Yes, my Queen. You have my word, please trust me. If we go as far as setting up a new government, you will have a leading role in it. I have led troops, your Majesty, but you are leading a people, and I trust that you would be an ideal candidate to lead Atlas and Mantle going forward.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Captain Ebi. Now this matter is closed this meeting should be dismissed.”

“Is it just me...” Marrow raises his hand hesitantly, “or we forgot Qrow Branwen?”

Clover seemingly flinches, abruptly turning to the overhead window as saturated light conceals the blush spreading onto his features. 

“Marrow’s not being stupid for once,” Elm concedes, punching the canine Augment lightly in the arm, which elicits a muffled yelp. “Who’ll deal with the REAPER IV when Ironwood calls him back to Atlas too?”

“Fine… I can take care of that. Ruby, you’re with Blake and her team… but only after you’ve spoken to Judge Hill. As the Queen said, this meeting should be dismissed. I will let you all know as soon as the virus takes effect and we can put our plan into motion, wait for my signal in the coming days.”

“Yes, Cap.”

The small crowd evacuates the room, trickling one by one out the minimalist wooden door. Yang nonchalantly stretches her arms over her head, eyes apparently randomly scanning the room until setting down onto Clover. 

“Don’t think I can’t see through your crap,” she speaks bluntly once everyone else left. “Ruby might be young and idealistic, but I’ve seen how you influenced her into attacking the government, and then how you influenced everyone else into thinking that was her decision and into following your plan. And to think I never pegged you as the manipulated type.”

“So why are you following the plan?” the Captain asks warily, his neat military façade dropping ever so slightly to reveal the weight of his exhaustion following recent injuries, his nervousness concerning future events.

“Because I’d follow Ruby everywhere, she’s like a sister to me. And it pains me to see the likes of you manipulating her into doing something that could get her hurt, that could get her killed, that could get so many people killed.”

“You dragged Miss Schnee into it, couldn’t she get hurt too? No, don’t answer that, I understand you, at war right decisions are hard to make, they always are. Since you asked, I wouldn’t have forced Ruby if she didn’t want to. But she did, she rolled with the idea and made it her own. I emphasised enough that the priority is interrogating Robyn and Ironwood, following Ruby’s idea, not tearing down the whole system to its grassroots.”

“But Ruby’s motivations won’t stop you from doing just that,” she counters, frustration shining in her violet irises. “I just hope you’re just trying to convince me, not yourself, and that Ruby really has melted even that tin heart of yours and sparked change for the better. Ruby has a habit of doing that to people, you know, she’s really something.”

“I can see that, she’s faced two REAPERs, survived, and never stopped fighting for justice and for the truth. But the choices have been made now, unless you want to call everyone back and tell them to stop. But you won’t do that, will you? That’s already the past, a long week is waiting for us, so let the past stay in the past.”

“I wish you’d practise what you preach. Just know that if a single hair of hers is hurt by your fault, you’ll have to face Bumbleby and me, and we’re not so nice when we’re angry. See you when the virus is active, Clover,” she snaps before leaving, heavy leather boots pounding the wooden floor.

* * *

“Qrow Branwen… I think it’s time for you and I to have a discussion.”

The Judge shuts down her monitoring and recording equipment before folding her arms over her chest. 

“What do you want to know?”

“Do I have a daughter?” Qrow prompts immediately. 

“You know that I’ve been curating your memory for years, choosing what you should remember, what you should forget. And it has been hard to make the right choices over the decades, due to… unfortunate circumstances. And if I’ve been keeping this particular… topic from you for so long, don’t think that I’ve forgotten, for I could never forget what I saw, what  _ you  _ lived through, and how traumatic it would’ve been had I not erased it. It’s simply that given how things turned out, I judged it beneficial if -”

Just Qrow’s luck, the alarms start blaring. 

Why did they have to choose this particular point to go off? He wonders confusedly, not expecting Robyn Hill to cock a gun in response and point it straight at him.

“Traitor,” she hisses. “You let a virus into my system, into the most secure portion of Atlas’s network!” 

“I…” he can’t help but run his hand through the feathery hair at the nape of his neck, where he just inserted the mysterious chip marked with a four leaf clover. 

Where his fingers trail, he feels the memories from the last two weeks like scorching touches, resurfacing suddenly in their full fractured, glorious entirety. He plugged in the device straight after the ELIXIR procedure, and no drug can ever take them away from him, never again. It soon becomes clear to his half-robotic mind that the neat software implemented in the chip not only restored his memories since his previous ELIXIR treatment, but also brought down all the firewalls protecting the Atlas network. What that implies he cannot begin to bear, for it hurts too much, he cannot ever remember hurting so much, how could Clover even… But he still wants to, needs to, has to figure out the truth about his offspring, about Ruby, and that involves apprehending the irate Judge ready to shoot him between the eyes.

As Atlas dwellers, unlike their Mantle and Shamble counterparts, Judges are allowed firearms. They are even trained in self-defense, so they can protect themselves should an ELIXIR procedure go south and a REAPER go rogue. Or at least, so they can hold out long enough before a rescue squad can be called to their aid. But the virus shut down the entire system, securely locking the door to the ELIXIR facility, and no rescue squad will be coming. 

Qrow moves like turbulent water, calculating the trajectory of her bullets from her barrel’s positioning to swiftly dodge. She fires in quick succession, barely managing to slow him down while pirouetting out of his way, jumping acrobatically over her equipment, her chair, toppling the table to shield herself. But he closes in easily, grabbing her weapon-holding arm with one fist while his other part-android hand wraps around her neck to lift her off the ground. His enhanced strength imprints his digits into her wrist, causing her to yelp in utter pain at the contact.

“Tell me about my daughter!” he yells, and for the first time utter shock replaces controlled animosity in her expression. 

For she has never seen him so uninhibited, so unravelled, so unbroken. In her whole career as a Judge, in her whole career in the Atlas military, she’s never seen something as fierce, as dangerous, as beautiful, and indomitable as a parent caring for their child. And as her lungs turn ablaze and her hands go numb under the unbridled force of his constriction, she manages to sputter, in semi-coherent syllables. 

“You... had...”

This distracts him for a fraction of a second, as probability calculations still fly past his crimson orbs. He knows the most likely outcome, he knows his luck, her rotten luck before it even strikes, he can guess what may ensue but he can’t trust her. He could have dropped her and caught the gun as it fell from her loosening grip. He could have caught the weapon in his hand before it hit the floor and fired haphazardly. He could have, if he’d let go of her in that very fraction of a second, as everything unfolds in slow motion before his eyes. But he can’t trust her not to grab the gun if he drops her, he can’t trust her, not with his own life, not with his newly regained memories. Doesn’t trust her. Could never trust her. Not after years and years, decades and decades of secrets she just admitted she’d concealed from him, about his own past, his own blood, his own family. 

In slow motion, he sees the gun collide against the ground, the bullet fired as a result, the flash of impressionistic red where her spine stands. But he can’t stop it, because he can’t trust her. He can’t stop it, he won’t stop it, until it’s too late and her limp body hangs in his bloodied hands. 

“Her… name… was...” the words spill out of her lips against a cascade of red, too much red, staining her tawny skin, her uniform, his hands.

And suddenly, the spark of light flees her purple eyes, like a fleeting bird taking flight. And all he can do is cry out, tears threatening to roll down his semi-mechanical cheeks. And it’s too late, because he couldn’t trust Robyn while she lived. 

With bloodstained half-robot fingers, he slides her eyelids close, concealing forever the secrets her eyes had seen, her eyes only remembered. The secrets she’d died to protect, just to protect him from his own past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Say something in the comments, let me know what you think. Next chapter next Wednesday, stay tuned xx


	7. For My Family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Where we cross the midpoint of the story, and real shit’s about to go down...

Qrow’s scythe quickly takes care of the door to the ELIXIR facility, powerful slashes angrily cutting through steel panels and copper wiring as if through butter. The robot guards Robyn had called to her aid are awaiting him on the other side, guns pointed straight at him while their leader metallically drones some platitude about Qrow being under arrest, about which he couldn’t care less. 

Spinning his weapon before him to block bullets, he moves along a practised dance, swinging diagonally to cleanly cleave several opponents at once across their hollow steel chests. With a single flick of his wrist, he slices both of the robotic hands holding a gun behind his head, and swivels to catch the firearm before it falls. While his scythe wielding hand produces a flourish to protect his side, he fires the gun at one enemy and uses it to bash another in the glass and metal mask that serves as its face. He hears regular android footsteps behind his back and shoots without looking, causing the carcass of the last robot to fall lifeless in its track. There were a dozen of them, and suddenly there were none, and it was almost too easy, and he still couldn’t care less, for his mind is still spiralling out faster than his scythe along dark and tortuous paths.

What could that mean? That her name _was_ … was it changed? To Ruby? Was his daughter even still alive? Who could the mother have been? A single name comes to mind, a pair of silver eyes, almost self-evident, but with his mangled memory of the past, how can he be certain? How can he trust anyone? The Judge’s dying words must have been the truth, for why would she have lied to him before passing on? Still, she’d lied to him his entire life, and there’s no one else now who might know the truth and be able to tell him. No one else, save for one person. 

His footsteps seem haphazard, his blade sowing as if drunkenly through groups of robot guards on his way, numbly, mindlessly. But his rage-filled vermillion eyes know exactly what path to follow through this mess of grey Atlesian marble corridors, the path to the only person who still knows the truth. The late Judge Hill’s commanding officer, Consul James Ironwood of Atlas. He’ll confront the man, no matter what, because it’s too late to turn back now. Not after all that happened to Robyn, to Clover, possibly to Ruby after he’d been incapacitated by Tyrian… If he turns around and gives up now, they’ll have died or suffered for nothing. 

He’s turned around enough, left others behind enough in the span of life he remembers, in the incomplete storage of his mangled memory. He’s let Ruby run away a first time in order to face Clover, using her as bait to lure the Captain in. He’s left Clover’s side in his sleep, thinking he would be nothing more than a liability to the veteran when he should have stayed to protect him and the silver-eyed girl. He’s left Ruby and Clover to fend for themselves again, at the mercy of Tyrian, after his foolishness allowed the demented REAPER to take him out in a one against four scuffle. Who knows how many people he’s left behind, run away from in his past… his daughter, maybe even her mother, his _family…_ so he could keep on surviving, dragging his metal and flesh parts along in his ELIXIR-addled state.

Paying no mind to the slain robot sentinels scattered around the floors, he uses his scythe to pry open a restricted access elevator to the top of the highest tower in Atlas, where Ironwood’s office resides. He’s not stupid, and he knows who else is searching for the Consul… if they’re still alive, that is, and he cannot tell the odds. Ruby is bound to be searching for the truth, never running away from it, as she’d always done from the start, and he doesn’t know if he can face her, his perhaps daughter that he’d perhaps abandoned multiple times already. 

And alongside her… Clover, her protector, Mantle’s vigilante, Qrow’s… whatever he was to Qrow, who had ruthlessly infected the REAPER’s very mind with a dangerous virus in hope that it would take down the whole Atlas network upon his ELIXIR procedure. Clover, who hadn’t hesitated, even seemingly on his dying breath, to use him as no more than a robotic vessel, a hollow shell of metal and skin, a tangle of algorithms, to reach his anti-government goals. Clover, who’d manipulated and utilised him, even after all that they’ve had together… whatever they’d had, whatever that meant to Qrow, to the Captain, in those moments of unbridled passion, in those too short instants burnt into his memory as if by a branding iron, in the shape of a four-leafed clover pencilled on a memory chip.

He wishes he could be like Clover, he wishes he could be like Ruby, determined, unwavering, unstoppable. But even as he focuses on the adrenaline, on bashing the robot guard’s heads against the side of the elevator as if cracking mere eggs, he knows he’s not sure he can face what he sees up there, what he finds out up there, and he’s not sure he’ll be able not to run away, just this once. 

A background calculation in a deep corner of his mind tells him the odds aren’t stacked in his favour, and he blinks it away as he stumbles out of the lift. 

* * *

“Captain, we have a problem,” Vine calls out through comms as he and the rest of Clover’s squad land into the spaceport. 

“Have you taken down the video surveillance system? Signalled our locations to the REAPERs to lure them out?” Clover says urgently.

“Harriet and Elm are on it.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Another ship is requesting the right to land, sir,” Marrow replies, fingers fumbling with the many switches of the communications tower dashboard. 

“Where’s it coming from?”

“Amity Orbital Station,” the dog-tailed Augment pants, holding elaborate binoculars to read the logo emblazoned on the landing ship’s site. 

“Ironwood must’ve called reinforcements from his watch tower out in space,” the Captain deduces. “Any human presence aboard?” 

Marrow swaps different pairs of lenses along the side of his binoculars until he finds the thermal detection setting able to identify human heat signatures.

“Not really, sir, but...”

“No, sir,” Harriet cuts in curtly, snatching the device from his hands too fast for him to react.

“Then shoot it down,” Clover orders, his voice low but hard as steel. 

“But, sir...”

“There are no humans aboard, so. Shoot. It. Down.”

“Yes, sir,” Elm replies loudly, aiming her rocket launcher straight at the vehicle about to land. 

Her rockets pierce the airship’s wing as it swerves, disrupting its trajectory and causing it to spiral downwards. Drawing his own weapon, Vine shoots multiple metal tendrils out that embed onto the side of the vessel, and Harriet turns on an electric discharge that sparks up the cables, delivering a shock to power down the spaceship’s electronics. The squad precipitately takes cover behind some docked ships as the vehicle from Amity crash-lands before their eyes, in a loud explosion followed by a rain of debris and sparks. 

“Target eliminated, Captain,” Harriet reports through comms, but her voice trails off as she sees a door fall open by the side of the fallen ship.

An arm emerges, dusting itself to reveal a pristine white uniform with ornate silver sleeve patterns. Soon, a silhouette follows, tall and slender, tumbling out but soon regaining secure footing and walking away from the wreckage unscathed. 

“This is bad, Cap,” Elm winces. 

“Is it a REAPER?” 

Peering out of their hiding spot, the squad can only take in the sight of the elegant stark white uniform, the moon-tinted hair bun, the famous cerulean eyes as bright as a cloudless sky after snowfall. 

“Worse... it’s... Winter Schnee.”

* * *

“Harriet, this is Weiss...”

Only static answers at the other end of the line, interspersed by shouts and loud collisions. 

“Harriet?” the heiress repeats, nearing her Scroll to her ear to no avail. 

“Could use a hand here,” Yang announces, expanding Bumbleby from its motorcycle to its full mech size to face the onslaught of robot guards from the other end of the grand ballroom.

The biker presses a switch, sending imbricated cogs spinning and heavy metal parts sliding until the yellow and black combat bot towers both girls, up to more than twice their height. As Bumbleby loads its fist cannons to spring into battle, Weiss quickly summons a holographic circular screen with a rotation of her wrist and presses a finger command, causing Armagigas to swing forward with its powerful sword, decimating a first row of metal soldiers. 

Yang’s robot jumps onto the occasion and the large white blade, employing it as a springboard to launch itself into the air, almost touching the ballroom’s high painted ceilings and ornate crystal chandeliers before landing heavily on the floor. As Bumbleby’s fist punches the wooden surface beneath, an overwhelming shockwave wipes out the remainder of the guards, that fatally crash onto the mirror-covered wall or plummet out of the large glass windows. Shielded behind Weiss’s bot, the girls flinch as the detached torso of an Atlesian guard, all steel and loose wires, is projected toward them at full speed. 

Reflexively, Weiss draws her rapier from her waist and stabs the robot through the chest, slowing its momentum to a stop. 

“What’s that, your grandma’s knitting needle?” the blonde teases in disbelief. “You brought a sword to a gunf-”

An explosion cuts her off as Weiss raises the robot’s metal bust, still impaled on her blade, to take the impact of a bullet on its trajectory to Yang’s head.

“I’ll admit it, that’s a good point. Your sword’s got a good point, it looks very sharp. Not that you don’t look very sharp, but...”

The brawler trails off as she follows the smaller girl’s glare, eyeing the shooter that just entered the ballroom. Weiss’s stance stiffens as she takes in the ashen moustache, the piercing green eyes narrowing as the newcomer raises his gun again, determined to hit his mark this time.

“Arthur Watts,” Yang whispers under her breath, finally meeting the famed REAPER V who never leaves Atlas, tasked to keep peace in the sky city and protect the affairs of its most wealthiest families - in other terms, the murky affairs of one Jacques Schnee.

“Looks like we have to do this on our own,” the Atlesian girl hisses, tucking her Scroll away as she prepares to face her arch-nemesis, abandoning all hope of support from Clover’s team, whatever has befallen to them. 

Weiss barely dares guess, for it certainly must have taken _something_ to stall a squad that already defeated multiple REAPERs. Repressing a shiver, she adjusts her footing and raises her sword in defiance.

“You’re sure you can manage?” the blonde murmurs, stretching her wrists synchronously with her giant bot. 

“You should go to the Colosseum, Cinder must be on her way already.”

Weiss never peels her eyes off her enemy as she talks, controlling the trajectory of Armagigas’s sword with a series of spinning glyph-like displays to block Arthur’s incoming bullets. 

“And Yang?”

“Yeah?”

“Be safe.”

With a quick salute from her gloved hand, the blonde readjusts her biking helmet, converts Bumbleby back into its motorcycle form and dashes off against the smooth wooden floor toward the colosseum. 

“Weiss Schnee,” Watts’s icy tone echoes through the large room as his dark coat tails float behind him in the wake of Yang’s passage.

“You killed my sister,” is all the heiress retorts. 

“She passed swiftly, painlessly,” he comments with pride, as if mentioning a delectable trinket of his own invention, “Unfortunately, I cannot guarantee you the same if you stand in my way.”

“Good, because unlike Winter _I will not be silenced ._ ”

He ducks with agility as Armagigas swings a dangerously low blow, before breaking into a run around the giant mech suit, peppering it with a volley of bullets precisely aimed at weak points and boundaries between pieces of armour. The next time the bot cuts down, he easily pounces over the blade, pushing one hand against the flat of the blade to correct his trajectory as he kicks the robot’s elbow before landing. That forces Weiss to elicit a new series of white glyphs of different sizes, changing her champion’s strategy to headbutting the enemy. The giant steel helmet can’t hurt the part-robot REAPER, but the impact still sends him flying, elegant shoes sliding against the dance floor. Armagigas follows with a brutal left hook, not expecting Arthur to simply catch it with a single mitten-clad hand while his gun fires a bullet rebounding off the giant sword to fly directly at Weiss. 

She attempts to dodge, the projectile slicing through luscious locks of silvery hair before shattering a window behind her. Yelping in surprise, she recollects herself, stretching out her sword while generating a new holographic glyph in her free hand, causing Armagigas to mirror her guard position. But it doesn’t remain for long, for the REAPER’s next bullet is aimed at the high-tech bracelets completing her white attire that grant her control over her glyphs and suit of armour. A hologram flickers off and back on as she winces in pain, the sturdy electronic jewelry having barely stopped the shot from piercing through her arm. 

She lunges forward again, but she knows she can’t last long. Armagigas glides across the ballroom like an ice skater, while she prances as swift as a ballerina, both circling in elaborate orbits around the gunslinger. But she can only use her bot to shield herself, now that the REAPER’s caught onto targeting her weak human body and her control systems rather than the giant metal armour. Ducking behind the robot’s boot as if behind a column, she tracks her opponent’s movements against the mirrors, searching for an opening that her needle-sharp sword can take advantage of. But Watts isn’t stupid, immediately shooting at his reflection before using the recoil of his weapon to propel himself off the ground. The mech’s giant sword rises to slash at him in mid-air, but this time he uses his accelerated momentum and well-placed bullets into rotating robotic joint to make the mech release its broadsword, which falls impaling obliquely into the wooden ground. 

Weiss needs to concentrate. She needs to breathe. To consider the possibilities, choose one of them, for she can’t have it all. Except she can. She closes her eyes, rapier raised vertically before her face in a perfectly balanced pose. Two of her white fingers tap a glyph hologram, then another, and the projections turn into mirror images surrounding her. Mirrors of Weiss, sword held up precisely vertically, ready to strike in any direction. 

Each Weiss, real or holographic, attacks in a different direction, forcing Watts to fire at each of them in quick succession, to uppercut one in the face with his enhanced ringed fist, to hit one behind the neck with the butt of his weapon. Weiss - the real Weiss - only has time to gasp as he catches her ruined ponytail, yanking her back with his part-android strength. As the illusory doubles fall apart like melting snowflakes, she can only powerlessly watch as his fist flies toward her eye. 

The blow makes her world shake, spinning out of focus as her consciousness slides away too fast, as if on an ice rink. She blinks once, twice, and the stinging pain returns with the remainder of her senses, for her eyelid feels ablaze, a veil of blood descending over her vision. 

“Does it hurt?” the REAPER sneers as she turns to face him with difficulty. “I wouldn’t have hurt you if you’d just surrendered like your sister.”

“Liar,” the heiress sputters, painstakingly wiping her face with her delicate white lace sleeve. “Winter would never have surrendered to you.”

“You’re out of options, Schnee,” he warns, pressing the barrel of his gun against her bloodstained temple. 

She needs to breathe. She needs to concentrate. Breathe in, breathe out, count her breaths like she counted his bullets...

“You know, you wouldn’t have used such an… _unsophisticated_ way of harming me, in a fashion so terribly unbefitting of the Atlas REAPER, if you hadn’t wasted all your bullets on the hologram doubles.”

His expression suddenly changing, he spins his gun in his hand around the trigger to bash her with the gun’s butt, but she raises her sword to parry. Using the impulse of her block, she bounces back to her feet and swivels around, protecting her back with her weapon as she runs away from him. Taking advantage of her apparent escape to reload his pistol, Watts fails to notice her running up the side of Armagigas’s tilted sword stabbed into the floor, backflipping in mid-air with arms outstretched like an angel’s wings before diving back toward him, slashing at his face at full speed as she lands. 

“How dare you!” he croaks in pure pain, turning toward her to reveal the oblique cut her blade drew from his brow to his nose, slicing through the skin to reveal the metal and circuit boards underneath.

She’s hurt him an eye for an eye, and his remaining emerald orb shines with fury, determined to make her pay. 

“You killed Winter. I will avenge her,” she spits.

Grabbing her by the arm as she scrambles to her feet, he raises his loaded gun and points it straight to her forehead, sighing almost melancholically. 

“I didn’t kill Winter. And I don’t have to kill you, if you just...”

Arthur only sees the flash of light through her irate, incredulous, incoherent blue orbs - before the front wheel of a yellow motorcycle collides into his back. Having accelerated through the full length of the ballroom, Yang’s vehicle traces a large arc before she can stop, holding a hand out to Weiss. As the heiress gladly grabs it, she notices the burn marks littering Yang’s clothing and mech-suit-slash-bike. 

“Are you all right?”

“Asks who? The one whose face is covered in blood?”

Neither of them have time to reply as Watts hurriedly regains his balance, gun pointed at the girls. Yang turns Bumbleby back to its giant bot form, jumping off the shoulders of Armagigas to reach the ceiling and detach a gigantic chandelier, all of its sculpted gold and glass parts collapsing onto the Atlas REAPER at once and incapacitating him. 

“You…” Weiss starts, bloodied eyes brimming with gratitude, before a large fire orb sails through the air between the girls. 

And Weiss recognises the slender, raven-haired silhouette of the REAPER VII, closing in after Yang, a curved sword in each hand. To the heiress’s nervousness, Cinder Fall appears unscathed from the fight, save for the bottom of her scarlet dress artistically singed at the front to reveal endless, toned ivory legs advancing like a predator’s paws stalking its prey. Weiss’s heart clenches in her heart as she realises Yang could probably do little more than race the female REAPER around the colosseum’s stairs and through the corridors to exhaust her, while attempting with some success to avoid her fiery attacks. 

As the slighter girl creates a small glistening glyph in the palm of her hand, Armagigas picks up its sword and charges at Cinder, while Bumbleby dashes in on wheels on the other side. Grunting, the REAPER crosses her scimitars, blocking the white broadsword with one hand and the cannon-loaded golden fist with the other. Clenching her fingers, Yang commands her mech to fire at their enemy, but the brunette simply bends to dodge and backflips away, deflecting Bumbleby’s blow straight at the other mech. As the silvery suit of armour staggers away, Yang’s champion is already attacking with its other hand, causing her foe to blink before tossing her sword straight into the cannon barrel. The human girls can only raise their arms to shield their faces before the left fist of Bumbleby explodes, a cloud of ashes and embers in its wake. 

As Cinder’s sensors scan the dusty air, Weiss is already diving in through the fog of sooty particles. Copied by her massive suit of armour, she dances along a complex choreography, slashes, thrusting, evading swiftly, relentlessly while Cinder matches both sword-wielding opponent strike for strike with a single scimitar and a bored scowl never leaving her features. 

“Is this all the rebellion has to offer?” the REAPER taunts, easily blocking an attack behind her back. “Some hapless teens who aren’t even convinced to fight, because they don’t care about the cause, only about their sisters? I never touched a hair of Winter’s, maybe you should consider surrendering.”

“I have. Heard that. _Enough_.”

Holding her rapier in both hands to match the half-android’s enhanced strength, she dashes straight ahead, the collision between their weapons sending searing sparks when Cinder parries. With her free hand, the REAPER grabs the blade of Armagigas swiping at her, seemingly painlessly as her fingers ignite to melt the broadsword’s metal at the point of contact. Yang finally finds an opening and runs toward the duelling women, punching the REAPER’s scimitar hard enough for it to splinter like glass. The curved blade shatters, allowing the heiress to use her momentum to stab Cinder with her rapier through the abdomen. 

A smirk playing at her lips, the REAPER nimbly retreats, apparently unaffected by her injury. Both combat bots close in on her, forcing her to jump sideways over Bumbleby’s leg and under Armagigas’s blade. An idea springs to her mind, and she stabs her weapon down into the yellow mech’s knee, landing onto its metal surface and running almost vertically upward against its steel thigh. Just as the silver suit of armour raises its sword, she rolls and glides along the flat of the blade, jumping off the robotic shoulder to set foot atop the metal helm.

“Yang!” Weiss howls, looking at their enemy perched on her bot’s head, sinking her blade through the helmet to stabilise herself as the grey armour fails to shake her off. “Need a hand?”

Armagigas extends a palm into which the blonde immediately drives Bumbleby, which transforms back into its mech form as Weiss’s champion lifts it through the air to face Cinder. Too late, alas, Weiss notices the expanding nano-tech bow Cinder draws from her belt, firing an arrow at Bumbleby mid-transformation. An eerie whistling sound echoes in the calm before the storm, before the arrowtip detonates, scattering pieces of the yellow mech suit all over the ballroom floor. 

“Don’t you dare hurt a single hair off Yang,” the heiress suggests coldly, pushing the brawler out of the way of falling black and gold debris with some difficulty. “She saved my life, and we always pay our debts in the family.”

More arrows meet the floor around the girls in response, sending them bouncing away chaotically in attempt to dodge before they explode. Painfully propping herself back to her feet on the shattered, charred floor, Weiss fails to notice the bullet slicing the air toward her head. 

“Weiss!” the blonde cries out before tackling Weiss to the ground, just under a revived Arthur’s line of fire. “Looks like you’ve got another debt to pay.”

The Atlesian girl ignores the jibe and the warm pressure of Yang’s buxom bust against her as best as she can, focusing her efforts on her glyphs to steer Armagigas toward Watts. Picking up the thick chain and cables that used to attach the fallen chandelier, the giant robot spins the humongous crystal object around like an oversized lasso. At the end of the chain, the chandelier hits Arthur in the stomach as he shoots at it ineffectively, effectuating a full rotation around Armagigas before sending him flying out of the ballroom’s imposing window with a deafening crash of broken glass. 

Still crouching on the head of Armagigas, Cinder lets out a frustrated shriek at the sight of her defenestrated allie, before sending a rain of fireballs down toward the girls. Picking up a random remnant of Bumbleby as a meagre makeshift shield, Yang barely protects the heiress and herself from the blazing attack. But the metal fragment she holds heats up enough to scald her hands through her gauntlets, to turn incandescent crimson, then white - and the teens both know she won’t last very long. Forming a small circular hologram around her sword, Weiss calls out something the blonde can’t quite make out under the sound of burning and exploding metal - something about her family, perhaps. 

All Yang sees before she drops the fiery debris is the greatsword of Armagigas stabbed into the bot’s own abdomen, and dragged upward with a sickening sound of metal tearing metal all the way to the helmet. Just as it sliced through the bot’s body, the enormous blade cuts Cinder before she can evade, before she can even finish emitting a blood-curdling scream. 

The silver suit of armour tumbles to the ground as the two girls race up to see the REAPER laying among the fragments of steel, of cable, of circuit board. They can’t tell how much of Cinder’s left side is missing, how much of her eye, her shoulder, her arm, for the roughly ripped metal, flesh, and skin appear carbonised, as if the half-android woman had made a last attempt to cauterise her wounds, a foolish attempt to keep fighting. The brunette’s remaining arm tries to reach for her fallen bow, as Weiss approaches rapier in hand, followed by Yang who’s picked up one of Bumbleby’s canons slung on her broad shoulder. 

Cinder can only look up at the two bot fighters, weapons pointed at her, before her right eye rolls back to extinct white. 

“Does that clear the debt?” the heiress snarks shakily, attempting with mixed results to alleviate the overwhelming tension.

“We’ve got to go. Ruby needs our help.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To keep on schedule and for my own sanity, I decided to split the originally planned chapter into two parts, so the next will feature Clover and Blake vs Tyrian amongst other things. Next chapter on Saturday, stay warm and posted xx


	8. (Mis)fortune

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should put a disclaimer at some point about Winter’s character - I took more liberties with her than with most other characters in this, so she’s written as kind of a fusion of herself, Fria, and Penny in canon. So be warned, and hopefully, enjoy :)

“Didn’t you say you had Qrow Branwen to run after?!” Blake shouts between two loud yelps as she blocks successive blows from Tyrian’s blades with her katana. 

The situation’s rather grim, the scorpion-tailed REAPER having managed to draw the Queen, her men, and the Captain away from the atrium and into a narrow corridor, where he can leisurely fight one opponent after the other, cackling frantically as he bounces against a wall while slashing at Blake, before swinging off a ceiling lamp using his stinger to kick at Clover’s face with both his boots.

“I did take care of him,” Clover says distractedly while dodging Tyrian’s attack.

As the crazed REAPER peers down from his hanging position to study the Captain’s expression, he finds that the veteran doesn’t sound so convinced. Clover rather lacks his usual composure and confidence as if his facade were starting to crack under pressure, which Tyrian finds rather amusing. The REAPER evades the soldier’s spear thrusts in mid-air with agility, landing almost flat on his stomach to avoid the electrified fishing line flying overhead. As his opponent approaches to stab him with the hook, Tyrian wraps his tail around the veteran’s ankle and kicks him flying down the corridor. Still smirking, the scorpion Augment watches as a fast approaching squad of robot sentinels marches on, shooting at Clover’s exposed back. 

Over the sound of gunshots, the REAPER doesn’t hear Blake attacking from behind, her curved sword striking to cleave off his stinger. But the vibrations sent by her blade only tickle against the steel of his Augmentation, toughened just as every other part of his half-robotic body. He giggles as his tail curls around her blade, giving an almost gentle, precisely timed _tug_ that neatly shatters the blade in its centre. The Queen gasps, shocked for a few seconds as he parades gloatingly, before she spins around undeterred and kicks him in the stomach powerfully enough to send him sliding backward into her troop of masked Augment fighters. 

The robots’ bullets are stopped from piercing Clover’s skin by his tactical gear, but the impact still affects him, bruising his very human body, bringing him to his knees and cutting his breath short. But the same light still shines in his aqua eyes, the same adrenaline-fuelled determination as he gets back up and stabs two metal soldiers, one behind the other, through the chest. From there, he quickly makes his way through their ranks as his sparking rope sails around him, blocking bullets and slicing through steel limbs in deadly orbits. His hook latches onto a gun dropped by a fallen robot, and he swings it toward Blake’s hands in replacement for the stump of her sword. 

The raven-haired girl catches without looking, her feline ears having deduced the trajectory and and nature of the weapon tossed at her. But she hesitates once the firearm sits in her hands, watching as Tyrian prances through the formation of her Augments, slashing throats, breaking swords, and crushing masks as if entranced by a gods-forsaken game. The REAPER’s moving too fast, consciously pushing her men into her line of sight, daring her to shoot. Tyrian can notice her hand trembling slightly when she finally fires into the air, causing everyone to pause.

“Move aside!” the monarch bellows, “It is my duty as Queen to protect you.”

“Are you sure you know how _that_ works?” the REAPER taunts joyously as everyone else retreats around him. “I don’t think guns like that are allowed in Mantle, let alone underground...”

But Blake says nothing, ever the taciturn one, only seemingly relieved that she managed to cut the losses among her soldiers by taking on Tyrian on her own. On her own, with Clover, the REAPER immediately amends in his mind as he catches Blake’s bullets with his weapons, with his stinger, with his enhanced fingers, before a punch from the Captain briefly knocks him aside. The metal stinger immediately curls up to push Clover off balance and into the way of Blake’s bullets, forcing him to toss his hook toward the barrel of her firearm and redirect it toward their mutual enemy.

“What do you two even have in common? O my Queen, o my Captain?” Tyrian sneers as the bullets rebound ineffectively against his chest, barely scarring the thin skin covering metal. “You do realise Clover’s lying to you about Qrow, your Majesty?”

“You hurt my soldiers,” she growls back instantly, “you hurt my _people_!”

With that, she lunges toward him, eliciting a mere shrug from the REAPER who crosses his wrist blades to block her gun before his face. As she hears Clover’s fishing line wrapping around the deadly stinger, she withdraws a hand from the gun to draw her broken sword, stabbing at Tyrian’s bared belly. Her foe erupts into a fit of laughter as he simply swivels around, causing her katana to thrust straight at the Captain’s abdomen. A panicked light flickers in her golden irises, before the veteran reflexively pushes her away with a swift move of his boot. 

“And _he’s_ hurting _you_ , your Majesty!” Tyrian retorts, revelling at the perfect example just unfolding before his eyes as the Augment leader scrambles back to her feet. 

The REAPER can’t help but notice that hint of uncertainty on Clover’s serious features as Blake attacks again, that touch of concern indicating he can’t predict whom, of himself or Tyrian, she’s planning to strike down. But the Captain’s but a simple soldier, with a simple goal, and he spins his hook at the end of his loop in rapid circles as he closes in to tackle the REAPER, swooping down to block a slashing wrist blade before wrapping the sparking fishing line around Tyrian’s ankle. 

The former soldier’s about to yank on the rope, knocking Tyrian face first into the nearest wall, but he hears Blake’s bullets from behind his opponent, whose stinger blocks round after round, and stops himself. He can’t afford to have the REAPER out of the way and the Queen shooting directly at him, accidentally or not, they all know that. Instead, Clover uses the blunt end of his weapon to jab at Tyrian’s stomach, causing him to stumble backwards. This is getting monotonous, the scorpion-tailed half-android bemoans mentally, wrestling against Clover while his Augmentation takes care of Blake’s bullets. For variety, he backflips to evade Clover’s tossed spear and spins on his head, using his tail to disarm the Captain while his foot knocks the cat-eared girl back. 

It’s possible that Tyrian’s having too much fun being a whirlwind of kicks and slashes, by the time a familiar scarlet scythe flies past his face, to notice the newcomer who grabs the fallen fishing rod unfortunately - for the REAPER - still tied to Tyrian’s foot, delivering an electric shock strong enough to incapacitate his electronics for a few seconds. 

“Ruby, what are you doing here?” Clover prompts, urgently regaining his weapon and lowering the voltage setting to ensure stray sparks don’t hurt Blake whose blade is clashing with the metal stinger.

“It’s Judge Hill,” the red-caped girl sobs, suddenly falling down to her knees, “she’s...”

And that’s enough for both Blake and Clover to understand. While the Queen, still shocked from the electric discharge, hesitates to approach the unravelling girl, Clover lays a strong hand against her crimson-clad shoulder, in the lightest of touches, like an anchor that keeps her mind from spiralling away into chaos. She closes her eyes, mindless of the tears drying down her cheeks, and neither of her allies can see or even dare guess what storms are rising in her silver orbs, inside her head...

“You seem distraught, _daughter of mine_ ,” Tyrian slurs, busy prying the electrified hook off his ankle with his teeth while he contorts in a rather gruesome angle. “Are these two people hurting you?”

“I have a plan,” the silver-eyed girl announces. 

By the time the REAPER frees himself and rushes back to them, the Captain’s retracted his fishing line to throw the hook straight at his enemy’s face. The male Augment catches the metal projectile with his mouth, almost disappointed at how easy that was as he glares tauntingly at his three opponents. Before he notices, Ruby tosses her scythe at an overhead lamp, creating a burst of light that blinds them all… Groaning with annoyance, Tyrian takes several seconds to recalibrate his visual sensors and notice Blake, holding the rod part of Clover’s weapon, finishing her full circles around him. Using her Augmented hearing and the taps of her heels to echolocate, the Queen’s already looped around him multiple times, running against the floor and the walls on either side of the corridor, each round wrapping the fishing line tighter around his torso and arms. 

The REAPER wastes no time in spitting out the hook, conveniently straight into the Captain’s hands. Both Clover and Blake tighten the rope, while Ruby uses the veteran’s broad back as a springboard to launch herself into the air. Her nimble feet find the tense fishing line, employing its elasticity to propel herself even higher, out of reach from the deadly stinger. Her cape traces a graceful curve, and before her boots meet the ground her small fingers already pressed open a metal compartment behind Tyrian’s neck, already extracted a syringe from his pocket. She loses no time in stabbing the syringe into its dedicated slot, emptying its content into the REAPER’s spine as he crumbles under the effects of the ELIXIR. 

Panting, the monarch releases the fishing rod, allowing the Captain to switch his weapon into its spear form, directing the tip toward the unconscious REAPER’s throat. He flinches in clear surprise as the remains of Blake’s blade move in to stop him. 

“An Augment should not kill another Augment. Not a downed one, and not for vengeance,” she hisses, her russet glare impenetrable. 

“Your Majesty...” Clover protests reluctantly. 

“Such is the law of the Augments, that saved your life once already.”

“Blake?” Ruby exhales, unsure of the Queen’s intentions. 

Silver eyes meet gold briefly, for burning seconds, before the feline Augment, broken blade raised high overhead, accelerates forward straight toward the Captain. Time seems to slow like freezing water, and Ruby spots Clover turning off the electricity on his weapon before half-heartedly raising it. Blake yells in mid-air as she pounces into attack, and as the veteran revolves around he can see her silky black hair floating behind her and the stump of her katana nesting itself into the red eye of a giant Manticore behind his back, the lion-like robot snarling wings outstretched before retreating. 

Behind them, a new squad of robot sentinels, accompanied by surveillance Manticores called back from Mantle, crosses the atrium, ready to fight the intruders. Blake stands sword in one hand, gun in the other facing the huge wounded feline robot, her metal ears straightening in defiance, promptly imitated by the winged lion’s own.

“You two go find Ironwood, go find out the truth,” she calls out to Ruby and Clover without turning to face them.

As the red-caped girl prepares to protest, she sees the monarch raising a closed fist, her troops drawing back into formation to take down the robot guards. 

“I’ll take care of that,” the Queen says. “With my people, for my people.”

* * *

Winter Schnee has seen it all, done it all. She’s done it all just to prove herself, and still she hasn’t fully succeeded. 

Winter was the firstborn daughter and heiress to Jacques Schnee, the wealthiest CEO in Atlas, the world, and the known universe. But that was before, that was the past. She left everything behind and joined the military, choosing to carve her own destiny rather than follow in her father’s footsteps. Still, she wasn’t free from her gilded cage, and Jacques as a skillful puppeteer pulled some strings to obtain her a series of quick promotions through the ranks of the Atlesian army. 

Winter had had to work hard, harder than anyone else, just to prove herself, just to prove she deserved her rank and her power, to prove she was more than a name and a pretty face. She led multiple missions off-planet, never hesitating to put her life on the line to ensure the success of her squadrons. But after the victory against SALEM, when her father’s business inevitably spread to space, and his satellite spread through the solar system in search of planets, satellites, and comets suitable for mining, Winter decided to return to Atlas. 

Winter Schnee’s seen it all, up to the final battle of Rosetta. And she saw even more after she became a Special Operative, an elite member of Atlas’s intelligence under the command of the revered war hero-turned-Consul James Ironwood. Times of burgeoning peace are more intricate than times of war, deceptively so, and espionnage became more and more central to the functioning of the sky city. She was one of his best, one of the finest investigators, and she finally felt like her luck was turning, like her efforts were finally attracting well-deserved recognition from her peers as she operated in the most secret spheres. 

That was until she was assigned one of the most high-profile dossiers, one she’d fought to obtain since it concerned her father’s company and the exploitation of Augment workforce in the mining colonies around the asteroid belt. She’d stopped at nothing to complete her mission, until she eventually collected all needed evidence and was about to uncover it to Ironwood himself. She’d never heard the footsteps of the REAPER V her father had sent after her, and there had been nothing she could have done before he silenced her. 

Arthur Watts had done remarkable work, truly remarkable work. She hadn’t felt a thing. When James Ironwood found her still-warm body by the door of his grand office, it was in excellent condition to turn her into a REAPER. But Winter Schnee was too recognisable, too precious, and the Consul had other plans for her. After his best scientists and engineers reworked her extensively using the most advanced technology available in Atlas, she was sent to space once more, to the observatory of the Amity Orbital Station. 

Winter Schnee’s seen it all, every event on Earth monitored by the flotilla of surveillance satellites, every suspect, every Augment, every veteran turned dissident on the run tracked by the camera eyes of the Manticores. She’s seen so many lives end, so many lives start from her ivory watchtower, and she’s remembered it all. She’s got the body of a REAPER and more, but she’s never been through the ELIXIR, for her one purpose is observation, not intervention. Every passing day, every passing hour, she processes immense streams of data to extract relevant information and report directly to the Consuls. 

She only has one mission, one last mission, and she’ll stop at nothing to complete it. 

Should the online systems supporting Atlas and its government be corrupted, she has to fly down to Earth and neutralise the traitor who brought the system down to then use Amity’s system, independent from the floating city’s network, to reboot Atlas. Which is exactly what happened. The system was astonishingly quickly paralysed, the virus crafted by the expert hands of Pietro Polendina having lost no time in taking down all the electronics of the city in the sky. Ilia Amitola, piloting the spread of the virus from the shadows, succeeded in taking advantage of the complex supercomputer brain of the REAPER who willingly took the bug into his own mind, to further boost the sabotage procedure. Such that the only hope to reboot Atlas resides in destroying Qrow Branwen’s supercomputer of a brain. Winter Schnee knows it all, has seen it all. Her mission has started, and she knows she has a job to do. 

She has seen so many lives start, so many lives end, and she can’t let anything, anyone stand in her way. Vine’s electric tendrils reach toward her like mere thorns embedded into her side. She feels pain, she can acknowledge it, but she’s seen pain so many times, seen so many people experience pain, screaming in pain as they were born, screaming in pain as they died, and she knows pain is no more than how one reacts to it. So she soldiers through, ignoring the pain as she tosses the sparking cables back at the pale-skinned soldier, barely looking as they entangle around his long limbs and cause him to drop at his comrades’ feet. She continues to advance, calm and composed, while two tawny women race toward her. The slighter one reaches first - she’s fast, but no faster than Winter’s enhanced reflexes, and the white-haired part-robot loses no time in skewering her enemy through the chest with her sword. 

She only has a smaller blade, barely longer than her hand to block an attack from the larger woman, swinging a large piece of metal debris at her head on the opposite side. Her parry barely deflects the fragment of crashed airship from her neat hair bun, while she ducks and knocks Elm off her feet with a low spinning kick. Before the larger woman even falls, Winter grabs her by the leg and swings her with a single hand into her fallen ship’s carcass, the metal helix wing torn away on impact. With her other arm, she cleanly withdraws her blade from Harriet’s body with a small, precise flick of her wrist, while her sensors already scan her surroundings, quickly spotting Marrow who’s taking potshots at her from behind the wing of a plane. As the bullets ineffectively rebound against her white coat, floating elegantly behind her ramrod back, she sees the glint of fear in his eyes, that same fear she’s seen in so many Augments before him as they recognised the Manticores chasing them down, as the last glimmer of hope left them forever. 

She can tell he’s brave, rushing toward her and tossing his emptied weapon ahead of him like he’s got nothing to lose. But she’s got no time for games as she catches the boomerang-like projectile a hair’s breadth from her face. No time for anyone standing in her way, for puny human lives, human lives she’s seen end many a million times, as she knows she has a job to do. She has a mission, her last mission, her only mission. 

Winter closes her eyes, sheathing her weapons and opening her outstretched gloved palms. The cold radiates from every inch of her body, colder than outer space where she dwells, too cold for anything or anyone to survive. And soon, a storm rises. 

* * *

When Qrow stumbles out of the elevator into the atrium, the famous fountain throning at its core is but a shadow of its legendary self. Debris from destroyed robots litter the marble floor, cracks and scorch marks marr the majestic basin around which Manticores pace like a pride of lions protecting an oasis. Only the impassible stone statue of a woman draped in flowy fabrics, a scythe extended above her head, stands tall and proud at the centre of the fountain, the fabled Maria Calavera, the hero of ancient tales and the inspiration behind the REAPER programme. 

Years ago, when he first became a REAPER, Qrow had looked into the lifeless marble eyes, observing his deformed reflection onto the mirror-like silvery orbs. All REAPERs got to meet the Consul on their first day, once they finally left the intensive surgery block that crafted them into what they are. They waited by the statue until the Consul came out of his office to meet them. Then they got to shake Ironwood’s hand, feel his firm grip under smooth white gloves, and then they were sent into the field. 

This time, Qrow doesn’t pause a single second to take in the majestic sculpture, or even the fragments of a dismembered Manticore surrounded by assorted robot broken pieces littering the floor around the fountain. No, this time he’s driven by a single urge, and he’s out for blood, immediately rushing toward the series of doors leading to the Consul’s office. Has he lost his mind? Has the virus he allowed into his head messed with the remnants of his very soul already? A small voice questions at the back of his head, maybe it’s too late, maybe he’s already insane, he’s already lost himself like a scarecrow swept away by a storm. He can feel it, the darkness spreading agonisingly, tantalisingly through his robot brain as he gives in to his bubbling rage to destroy everything in his path. 

How could Clover have done that to him? Betrayed his trust, used his curiosity, abused his mind? He’d let the human inside the most intimate depths of his body, but did that allow the veteran to also infiltrate the deepest parts of his mind, possibly tearing them to tatters in the process? He thought he and Clover had… something… had that _something_ been a simple stepping stone for the former soldier all along? One more step toward accomplishing his grand plan, ending the REAPERs, and bringing down the government? What had Qrow been thinking anyway - why would whatever _something_ they’d had matter to Clover more than his lefetime’s masterplan, when they’d known each other for mere, however passionate, hours? Why did it matter so much to Qrow? He can’t be sure of anything, he can’t tell what he’s been thinking, because he must be losing his mind…

It doesn’t matter now, for the remaining Manticores are closing in on him. Qrow raises his scythe, spinning it easily as he revolves in an ungraceful stumble to clear out all attacking creatures in his nearest perimeter. A severed paw clatters to the floor, a slit throat sends a shower of sparks onto him, a lion-like robot is split from head to tail into symmetrical halves in one single blow as Qrow slides underneath its belly, shoes skidding against the marble floor while the whole atrium trembles with the heart-wrenching roar of steel cutting through steel. 

It’s all too loud around him, but it’s silent inside, his soul’s an empty robotic carcass of rusty metal that quietly creaks at his every move. It’s dark in his head, the virus is spreading and unfortunately he can’t do anything to halt it. No matter how many Manticores drop at his feet, slashed by his blade… he’s losing himself, because the battle inside his head is one he can’t win, and he’s too wary to estimate the odds any more. 

Extending his weapon into its war scythe form to stab the stomach of a flying feline monster overhead, he swaps the polearm around to plant his blade into the ground. Using the elasticity of the scythe’s shaft, he propels himself into the air, cleaving one of the monstrous robot’s wings as he floats past its back. As he lands, he converts his weapon into a sword in mid-air and stabs vertically down through the skull of a remaining surveillance robot. As red camera eyes stop glowing, the Manticore’s hollow head feels like a hunting trophy under his feet, and his blade sunk straight through the black mane stands like an anchor as he crouches by its side, hands firmly holding the pommel, numb and barely panting.

Fighting almost feels good, he almost feels in control, and he nearly forgets that everything is slipping out of his grasp. He focuses on his breathing, steady, regular, on his gestures, powerful, well-rehearsed, as mindless as the creatures he kills. A scorching impact draws him out of his thoughts, and he turns to the largest of the Manticores that had just blasted him with a fire orb out of its throat, sending him sliding backward on the smooth stone floor. Just his luck, he hits the side of the fountain and releases his grasp on his weapon upon the shock, a strong robotic paw swatting the blade away like a mere fly. 

Vermillion eyes are approaching quickly as the creature trots toward him, considering its prey like a cat toying with a mouse before going for the kill. He looks into the camera lenses as if into mirrors, taking in the same pale red shade that colours his irises, the same bloodlust, the same hollow darkness underneath, the same emptiness. The virus is taking control of his mind, deploying probability calculations he couldn’t care less about - he shakes his head but it won’t go away, nothing can go away now, and he can’t run away any more. He looks into the mirror of the camera eyes - and then he sees it. 

The virus is taking control of his mind - and so can his mind take control of the virus. It’s a beast to be tamed, a bird beating its wings as if to break free of his head, but he can control it, steer it to his advantage. The mind of a REAPER is a wondrous place, full of swirling ramifications and parallel processes, but with the addition of the virus it becomes a dark labyrinth. His mind soars above like a crow trying to use the stormy currents to rise, and the maze walls that blocked his way are now endless paths, endless possibilities. And suddenly there’s not a piece of technology on the whole Atlas network that isn’t somehow within the virus’s reach, within _his_ reach. 

He blinks, and the ceiling lamps malfunction, some outright shattering, the Manticores stagger in their steps, the doors open and close and the loudspeakers bleat incoherently. His eyes glow a dangerous crimson when he opens them again, and the unlucky winged lion before his face, frozen in place, doesn’t react as he calls his sword to him using a magnet implanted in his wrist bracelet. 

When the blade, thrown in one smooth motion, flies past the surveillance robot’s face, it swipes a paw to casually destroy it. But it can’t predict the parts reassembling in mid-flight into the infamous scythe form, under the effect of Qrow’s newest enhancements to his weapon. The blade flies past the giant creature’s head, as the REAPER’s probability calculations predicted, and loops around one of the weapons brandished by the Calavera statue. As the marble snaps cleanly at the point of contact, the stone scythe falls straight through the air, the heavy blade finding its target deep down the largest Manticore’s throat. 

Regaining his weapon without so much as a look, Qrow doesn’t stop there, revelling in the adrenaline and the extent of his newfound ability to make all the other lion-shaped stop dead in their tracks, collapsing in a rain of crimson sparks. He reaches a hand toward the metal doors separating him from Ironwood’s office and watches intently as they progressively unlock and slide open, all security barriers rendered ineffective by the virus boosted by his enhanced REAPER’s mind. He’s back in control, in his mind, and he’s never felt that much in control in his life, not in his memory, electricity coursing down every metal and nervous fiber of his body in pure, furious excitement. 

He’s not even that surprised at his own (mis)fortune when the opening partitions reveal Ruby and Clover crouching in the space between two doors, his hook and her scythe attempting to cut their way through the safety systems on lockdown between them and the Consul’s office. Aqua eyes however contain a mixture of astonishment, apprehension, and admiration at the familiar shape of the scythe-wielding REAPER, eyes glimmering the same tint as his tattered cape. Clover’s voice is barely loud enough when he finally breaks the silence.

“Qrow… how did you do that?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Qrow’s misfortune, up to eleven. I hope we’ll see him use it that way at some point in the show. Feel like I should say something: look, I don’t hate the Ace Ops, I do find Harriet kind of annoying but that’s mostly because of Ep12… yeah let’s not mention that episode. I only planned for them to be background characters in this story with very few lines so that Clover had some people to ‘yessir’ his orders (aka some people to dump exposition on) and so that Winter wiping the floor with them creates an ‘oh shit’ moment establishing just how strong she is. Still, writing this chapter was so much trouble because I actually care about these characters in canon (or at least Marrow, but I like Elm too) as opposed to here… I hope it didn’t turn out too bad, lemme know below in the comments. Tyrian… it should be obvious by this point that I have so much fun writing his fight scenes, he’s a crazy character with basically no redemption arc possible and I’m not getting tired of his antics.
> 
> The next two chapters should be the time for big reveals and the culmination of the whole story. Next update next Wednesday, stay warm and tuned.


	9. Nightmares and Dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See that chapter count up top? Means I finally finished writing the whole thing, and this chapter is the beginning of the very final act! 
> 
> Alternatively titled A Summer Night’s Dream. Warning: sad. Enough so to deserve a warning.

“ _How did I do that?_ That’s all you have to ask?” Qrow shrieks, racing toward Clover with his blade held behind his back. 

“Qrow, I...” 

But the REAPER doesn’t let the human answer the rhetorical question, instead tackling him into the heavy door that opens behind him and then immediately slides shut, isolating Ruby from the two of them facing off in the confined space between metal doors. 

“Will you hear me out?” the Captain yells, throwing out his weapon’s hook to wrap his fishing line around Qrow’s weapon and deflect it as the REAPER raises it as if for a swing. 

“How did I do that? I did that with the virus you put in my brain! You implanted a bug designed to bring Atlas to its knees, destroying everything in its path, so now I’m using it to destroy everything in my path. Are you surprised?”

“You took control of it,” the soldier realises. “You’re even stronger than I thought. You deserve so much more credit than -”

“How _dare_ you? You used a ruse to sneak into my mind, to take control of it, without even knowing if it’d destroy me, take away the remainder of my sanity! You used me! I thought we had something going on, and you abused my trust! I should never have trusted you, should never have let my guard down. What am I to you, just a mindless robot you can manipulate into doing your bidding?”

“No, I never thought that, Qrow, I’m sorry if -”

Clover’s reply is cut short as Qrow yanks on his weapon around which the fishing line is still entangled, disarming the veteran with a sharp tug. He throws his blade into the nearest wall, keeping both weapons out of reach from the soldier as he dives in to pummel the larger man into the next door. While the electric rope allowed the Captain to keep up with REAPERs in combat, Clover has no chance in hand to hand fighting, each punch by enhanced metal and bone fists sending throbbing pain rippling through his chest, his ribs, his body. 

“I did it because this was always the plan! Because this was always my dream!” the human pants, and Qrow believes it, or at least wants to believe it, wants to believe that light shivering in the mesmerising teal eyes.

It’s been his dream for so many years, so many years of waiting, meticulous planning, tracking down REAPERs and striking only from the shadows. Years of waiting for his luck, for his chance to strike, to put the virus into action, and make his dream come true. How could Clover have thrown everything away and favoured some personal, selfish feelings within a few hours of lust over the big picture, over Atlas, over the world? 

Qrow knows that and wants to accept it all. He wants to drown into the aqua irises as if in the clearest of lagoons, wants to forget it all like the gentle caress of the ELIXIR, wants to capture Clover’s lips with his own and forgive him everything, the perceived betrayal, the unfortunate events that followed, the mayhem that surrounds them as all goes down to chaos as if Atlas staggered underfoot. He wants to forgive it all, but he doesn’t know if he can, if he ever can...

“You think it was easy?” Clover shrieks, his words hurting more than his punches as he desperately tries to push the part-android back. “You think it didn’t hurt? That I didn’t have to choose between my duty and my feelings? I had to make the right choice, not the easy one. I had to make the hard calls so others don’t have to.”

“You could have told me,” Qrow retorts as the tears start welling in his eyes, his grip tightening around the veteran’s shoulders until his slender knuckles turn white. “I would’ve said yes, would’ve done anything for you… I mean...”

His voice falters at those words. Would he have done whatever it takes? Would he have given up everything he was, his mind, his soul, his body, to become a vessel for the Captain’s dream? Would he have forsaken everything he was up to this point, as a REAPER, as a person, to support the revolutionary cause of a man he met overnight simply because of his developing, flawed, human, oh-so human-feelings? He doesn’t know the probability, cannot compute it, and the mere thought entirely terrifies him.

“I wanted to trust you, I wanted to tell you in the morning, and _you left_!”

Their foreheads are almost touching as they breathe the same heated, tense air. Qrow’s hands are grasping the soldier’s shoulders as if to never let go, and the human’s hands are wrapped around the REAPER’s wrists with all his might, holding him in place like the last lifeline he’s got left.

“I came back… and I know it’s not enough, it’ll never be, and we can’t change the past. But Clover, please...”

Forgive me, his eyes want to say. Forgive me, his lips can’t bring themselves to utter, for the tears are choking him up, and Qrow doesn’t care anymore, he’s beyond forgiveness, beyond redemption, beyond love if that’s what he’d been hoping to find in the warmth of Clover’s arms, in the strength of his beating mechanical heart. 

“I wanted to ask you permission,” Clover pleads, barely a whisper, eyes brimming with sincerity. “But there wasn’t enough time, there was never enough time...”

And gently, so gently it takes Qrow aback for long enough for him not to oppose any resistance, he seizes the REAPER’s hand and places it over his heart. And immediately Qrow understands, he’s always understood, always known… the clockwork heartbeats bear the slightest irregularity of a broken clock, his sensors can tell the prosthesis splinters and damages further at every beat, unwinding slowly, unravelling inexorably at each second the clock ticks. It wasn’t just due to Tyrian’s attack, it was bound to happen at some point, like an unsung fable destined to end. Qrow’s high-tech sensory system estimates he has months, maybe weeks left before the heart gives out, before all that was dust returns to dust. Clover’s always been only human, only mortal, and how can Qrow blame him for wanting to see the world finally ever so slightly improved with his own eyes, while he still lives? For wanting to see his dream come true, to ensure all the waiting and planning, all the suffering and sacrifices, all the nightmares were worth something?

Qrow’s fingers rest against the smooth surface of the veteran’s heart, the metal envelope that starts to feel familiar, soothing, beautiful in its brokenness, prideful of its scars. Clover’s hand rests atop his, and he’s suddenly aware that the green-eyed man trusts him entirely now, trusts him with his life, his heart, his chance of seeing his dream blossom, while he doesn’t have to trust him. Qrow’s never believed in destiny, he’s never known what love is, or if he once did he forgot, the ELIXIR would have wiped out all memories of it if he’d ever loved and lost. But what could love be, if not infinite, improbable, illogical trust from someone who should be an enemy, who’d dedicated his whole lifetime to eradicating his kind, now putting his own life and dreams on the line just to prove his trust…

Qrow shudders and the door behind them slides open, causing both of them to stumble in a haphazard embrace onto a carpeted floor. The REAPER’s lost control and it’s okay, it’s okay not to feel okay just this once. The room they end up in is of breathtaking beauty, the view from the majestic metal desk showing all of glistening Atlas, chaotic Shambles, and picturesque Mantle underneath through a monumental panoramic window. It’s the highest point of Atlas, the highest room of the highest tower in the world, and they couldn’t care less, too entranced by the sight of each other, by the feeling of each other, alive and well, in their arms, by the uncertainty of perhaps-reciprocated forgiveness, perhaps-reciprocated feelings. 

It’s the sound of a single clap that eventually causes them to return to senses. The curt, odd clapping of hollow metal against human flesh, both wrapped in silky gloves. Both Clover and Qrow recognise the clapper before they even turn around to face him.

“Guards,” Consul Ironwood calls out. “Take them out of my office, I don’t have time for that. I have Atlas and the known universe to run.”

The click of metallic boots against the thick carpet soon surrounds the two intruders. And now they’re really out of time, they don’t have weeks or months anymore, only seconds before a volley of bullets pierces their skins. Qrow can only hold the robots back, causing them to malfunction with a single thought, for so long. And it’s not enough, it’s never going to be enough, and Qrow wishes he’d had more time, time to tell the Captain how he felt, to promise he’ll never run away again, to forgive him for everything he did to thank him even to say he supports his dream and he’ll always stay by his side no matter what... 

But he doesn’t have time for that, he only has time to get almost onto tiptoes and press his lips against Clover’s. 

The kiss is too brief, too violent, too gentle, not enough as the soldier responds fervently after an instant of frozen shock. There’s not enough time, they both know it as their mouths slot perfectly together, they’re held at gunpoint by a dozen robot guards and they couldn’t care less, that can wait, time can wait, the world can wait. And in these few fleeting instants stolen from eternity, Qrow pours all of himself into the kiss, all of his care his feelings his uncertainty his concern his admiration his love…

All good things must end, all dreams must lead to waking, and time must go on, for there’s never enough time. So when their lips regretfully part, Qrow reaches out his hand and draws in his scythe using his wrist magnet, his eyes never leaving Clover’s. The large blade spins through the air, stabbing a robot between the shoulder blades on its way and bringing the soldier’s fishing rod, still entangled around Qrow’s polearm, back into Clover’s grasp. Both of them start to move, revolving back to back as their weapons trace lethal trajectories around them - the hook sailing across complex flowing paths, the scythe rotating along lightning-fast circles, the two large weapons never intersecting as they dance in terrifying, efficient synchrony. 

Mere seconds elapse before most of the robot sentinels lay defeated at their feet, as the veteran’s rope wraps around one of the last standing metal soldiers behind Qrow, allowing the REAPER to swivel around and behead it in one smooth arc of his blade. His eyes glowing a deeper shade of vermillion, the part-android causes the last robot’s gun to misfire, long enough for Clover to throw out his hook and cleanly cleave the bullet in two when it finally leaves the barrel. The electric cable wraps around their opponent’s wrist and sends the robot flying toward the door, conveniently straight into Ruby’s scythe as her massive blade eventually claws its way through the barriers before Ironwood’s office. 

Twirling their weapons in symmetric motions, Qrow and Ruby lose no time in swinging toward the Consul, whose white coat cuts a dark shade against the light-saturated panoramic window. James simply raises both hands to block their blades, and while one scythe bounces ineffectively against metal concealed under silk, the other draws blood from a human palm, staining the beautiful ivory glove. Ironwood’s jaw clenches under the pain, but he doesn’t back down, won’t budge despite the two giant blades pointed at him. 

“You’re one of us,” the REAPER IV breathes in realisation. 

“Not quite,” James replies, the slightest wry smile barely distinguishable under his lush dark beard. “I am part human, part robot, just like you. This was my only way to survive my injuries from the war, to keep fighting, to keep moving forward. I was one of you.”

“And then?” Clover prompts positioning himself between the two scythe-wielders, spear pointed straight at Ironwood’s Adam’s apple. 

“Someone had to remember past mistakes, past scars. Someone always has to bear the burden, for the rest of the REAPERs, the rest of the people.”

“You cut yourself off the ELIXIR,” the Captain deduces, brow furrowing in disbelief. 

“It was hard at first, and I thought I was going insane. The memories of the war, of my injuries, of the surgical procedures that made me into… what I am now, those kept haunting me, treading my nightmares. But I pushed through, brushed off the pain, and now here I am.”

“You’ve lost your mind,” Qrow hisses. “You’ve sacrificed it all...”

“I’ve sacrificed whatever it takes.”

“Doing the hard thing doesn’t make it right!” the REAPER screams, lifting his scythe to deliver a final blow before Ruby’s voice cuts him short. 

“What do you know of project B?” she asks, voice unwavering as the older men stare down at her slight red-clad form. 

“Project BEACON was Ozpin’s brainchild,” Ironwood sighs after a short silence, astounding Clover and Qrow with his cooperativeness. “The aim was to form a new generation, with the advantages of the REAPERs, the enhanced body and mind, and without the disadvantages, the reliance on the ELIXIR. A generation that could eventually reproduce with the rest of the population. A beacon of hope for the future, in a way. We combined DNA from all eight REAPERs at the time to genetically engineer human foetuses. Ten of them, to start with. The children were born in a top-secret Atlas lab, and they were trained from birth to become the perfect soldiers. Judge Hill was given supervision of the project and believed the results to be highly promising.”

“Where did the project fail? Why did you have to shut it down and destroy all evidence?” the Captain wonders.

“The physical and mental abilities of the test subjects were peerless, and when they grew to their adult size outfitting them with some REAPER parts would have made them truly unstoppable. No, where it failed was in the virtual reality simulations. When faced with crisis situations, the subjects reacted unpredictably, uncontrollably. And the last thing we want for a soldier in a crisis situation is to be uncontrollable.”

“They were _children_!” Qrow calls out as Ruby shakes by his side, dropping her weapon under the probable weight of memories from those traumatising simulations. “Not test subjects, not soldiers, children! And you killed them all because they wouldn’t follow your little orders under such stress kids shouldn’t even have to face!”

“Neutralising all the test subjects has been considered, but Judge Hill would not allow it. She compromised for burning down all the BEACON facilities and wiping the episodic memories of all the subjects. Alas, not all ten emerged unscathed from the fire.”

“Ilia and I were part of the ten,” the silver-eyed girl murmurs, still trembling as she falls to her knees, staring blankly at the pale view out the window. 

“So you weren’t… you were never...” the male scythe-wielder speaks hesitantly, only starting to understand the implications. 

“Ruby was never your daughter,” James confirms, “You have a small fraction of shared DNA, but not more than she has in common with any of the other REAPERs. It’s all an unfortunate misunderstanding.”

“No… Robyn spoke of my daughter… she said...”

“Judge Hill protected you till the end. Until you killed her.”

“I didn’t...” but Qrow’s eyes betray his uncertainty, his bubbling guilt as he shakes his head mechanically, Ruby staring at him wide-eyed. “I couldn’t trust her. I couldn’t bring myself to trust her because she spent her lifetime lying to me. And I can’t trust _you_ either, James.”

“He deserves to know the truth,” Ruby intervenes, “We all deserve to know.”

“It’s not about what you deserve, it’s about the greater good! I can’t let one of my REAPERs be overcome by grief, lose his mind, and rampage freely around the city! If he figures out the truth, he won’t be the man you both know and love, he won’t be a kindly pretend-father to you any more, Ruby. He’ll be a REAPER consumed by rage and sorrow over his lost baby girl and her mother, he’ll be no more than a harbinger of dark emotions drawing in SALEM.”

“No.” Clover murmurs, before repeating more firmly. “No, I don’t believe so. Qrow won’t let his trauma define who he is. I know him, and he has taught me that once. I know he won’t forget it. Qrow?”

“There’s… a probability,” the REAPER winces, gaze inscrutable as he struggles to estimate the likelihood of losing himself, of failing to face the nightmarish demons of his past, as his heart tightens in his chest at the simple, yet boundless trust the Captain put in him, in the strength of his mind and soul. 

“Even if it’s a small probability, with the amount of damage an out of control REAPER can cause, not to threaten the fragile peace we have to treat it like a certainty,” the Consul judges.

“Why so serious?” a sickeningly familiar voice bemoans from the corridor as a panting Tyrian, dishevelled but otherwise unharmed, leans into the doorsill with his usual smirk plastered on his lips. “Did I miss something, sir?”

“Halt,” Ironwood orders just as the scorpion-tailed REAPER prepares to rush into the room to attack the Consul’s assailants. “Qrow here is responsible for the death of Judge Robyn Hill. You may take care of Qrow, REAPER VI - but since we have no more need for him, I may as well return his memories before you dispose of him.”

Tyrian pouts but takes a deep bow at these words, while the others watch skeptically as Ironwood walks to his desk, removing his glove from his bloodied hand to press to open one of many fingerprint-locked compartments on the high-tech table. The drawer slides out with a faint hum, revealing a series of well-aligned chips marked with increasing numerals - the memories of each of the REAPERs, in all their raw entirety. 

“Since you don’t believe me,” James shrugs as he hands out the memory device with uncharacteristic wariness. 

“Are you sure?” the Captain asks, aqua eyes seeking out crimson orbs as if for the last time, as if uncertain any fragment of the Qrow he’d fallen for, any fragment of him in his wholeness, his brokenness will still reside behind those red eyes when he next opens them, when he regains his memories of past love, past loss. 

But they all know there’s no backing down now, not for every effort, every sacrifice to count for something. Qrow’s fingers move with absolute determination as he picks up the chip from Ironwood’s hand and immediately inserts it into a slot behind his neck.

* * *

The storage device slides in with the slightest of clicks, and nothing occurs, everything is silent, almost anticlimactic. 

Qrow blinks, once, twice, ignoring the nervously expectant eyes from everyone else in the room. 

It doesn’t feel any different. 

As if the memories were always there, like the phantom pain from a severed limb that should always have been part of him. 

Qrow blinks, and he remembers. 

* * *

_Seventeen years ago_

They’re on Phobos, the war is ending, slowly but surely as they chase down the last squadrons of SALEM from the solar system. A new era is about to start, and the sunrise is near, hopeful warm rays caressing the horizon while the starry night retracts progressively. Airships are firing in the sky, but the REAPERs on the ground are far from useless. In the reduced gravity, Qrow prances around like a young stag, his enhanced body effortlessly withstanding the temperature fluctuations that came with the thin atmosphere. His scythe spins in mid-air as he fights, slashing at generators to bring down spaceship shields, splintering cockpits and waving mockingly at the Grimm inside, tempting them to dive down to the ground after him and right into the line of fire of the Atlesian cannons. 

The tactic used to have limited success, for the hive mind of SALEM’s Grimm kept the aliens in line, prevented any one of them to separate from the swarm out of rage or spite to chase a single target. That was before the humans figured out the REAPERs could amplify their negative emotions, the pheromones of which affected the SALEM hive communications and painted immediate targets onto the REAPERs’ backs. Qrow had become particularly adept at this approach, to the point it was almost a game to freefall through the canyons and craters of Phobos, broadcasting his negative feelings with practised ease. He knows the odds and probabilities, and he knows full well that his strategy is effective. 

He knows the probabilities and odds, but he’s not invulnerable. A flash of white dances past his eyes before an unstoppable force tackles him to the side of a crater. And a single second later, a powerful photonic blast ignites the air where he was freefalling, fired by the Atlesian cannons and destroying the alien ship that had been pursuing him. As he looks up at his saviour, she draws her hood back from her face, a playful smile at her lips. 

“You’ve got no respect for your personal safety,” Summer smirks as both of them can barely contain their giggle. 

“Because I know you’re always here to save me, rosebud,” Qrow retorts, revelling in the crystalline sound of her laughter. “Besides, my life isn’t the one that should matter most here.”

His eyes dart to her armoured corset, briefly illuminated by a flash of sunlight. Victory is drawing near, and they’re both basking in the giddiness, in the excitement, in their hopes for the future. They’re still young, they’ve got so much time before them. 

“Bullshit, birdie,” she teases before glancing up at the enemy mothership of this Grimm squadron slowly looming overhead. “Think we can end this once and for all?”

“Maybe?” he shrugs with a pout, twirling his weapon without even looking to cut down some aliens from the crashed ship running toward them. 

She shoots him an almost genuine concerned glare, and he almost falls into the trap, almost drowns into her clear silver eyes. But it’s a farce they’ve played so many times, and at no instant did he doubt himself, did he even dare doubt Summer Rose. She wasn’t the first and best of them for nothing, after all. 

“Of course I trust you,” he scoffs, and she doesn’t need anything more. 

He spins his weapon around him in accelerating circles, and she smiles heartily as she races to catch it like a child hopping onto a merry-go-round. He expands the polearm into its war scythe mode, making the end rotate even faster as she clings onto a blunt hole near the extremity. Soon, her feet are airborne, and he only needs to throw his weapon like a spear to propel her into the air, carried by the amassed momentum through low gravity. She shoots her photon guns downward to accelerate her flight further, until she safely lands atop a SALEM ship and tries to hijack it, steering its soft shell with Qrow’s war scythe. As surrounding spacecrafts collide into one another at the sudden trajectory changes, the mothership immediately notices and charges a monumental cannon, ready to fire at the unruly spaceship. 

Summer recognises her cue, and so does Qrow. He catches onto a low-swooping plane and saunters his way toward her in a random ballet, simply punching at the ships or aliens that dare come his way. Silver eyes meet red, and next she’s running up the barrel of the vulnerable charging cannon. His heart clenches as he sees the signature silver flash of her weapon emerging from inside the enemy firearm, before everything explodes in a rain of fireworks. 

Her stark white cape wrapped around her silhouette, Summer’s falling from the shattered cannon, from the debris of the enemy airship burning up as they tumble through the thin air. Summer’s falling - straight into Qrow’s arms, as they’ve done so many times before. He catches her, and both of them can’t help but grin as they gaze into each other’s eyes, just as many times before. But she’s getting heavier now, and he stumbles slightly on his feet before gently setting her down at the bottom of a crater while the alien spacecrafts tumble around them, defeated in the aftermath of the mothership’s destruction. 

“Told you so,” she beams at him. 

“You shouldn’t take so many risks,” he reprimands kindly, running a hand through her red-streaked hair. 

“I know you’re always here to catch me. And I trust you.”

“You’re safe now. _She’s_ safe now. And that’s all that matters.”

And he’s right, the enemy is falling, the sun is rising, and that’s all that matters. As he speaks, his hand caresses her abdomen, and his breath hitches as his hypersensitive fingertip sensors detect the faintest hint of stirring.

* * *

_Sixteen years ago_

“A REAPER’s body is not constructed to undergo such change, Qrow.”

Robyn Hill stares into the distance, into the bright sunrise as her flowing dress floats in the breeze around her. She holds a steaming teacup pressed to her lips, the white porcelain contrasting with the tint of her tanned skin. 

“I don’t give a damn about what it’s constructed for. Summer’s stronger than you realise. Our daughter’s stronger than you realise,” Qrow says without looking at Robyn, instead narrowing his eyes in the blinding light as his hands sink even deeper into his pockets. “The doctor told me they were both all right. That Summer’s due any day now.”

On the balcony, the first roses of summer are about to bloom, their timid petals turning toward the opalescent sky. 

“You know what this means, right?” Robyn prompts gently. 

“If REAPERs can have progeny, if they can reproduce with the general population, it means we can reshape humanity to our own image, a humanity without trauma, without suffering, without the negative emotions that can draw in SALEM. Look, we’ve been over this. It all started by chance, but Summer and I accepted the risks and the consequences when we agreed to keep the child. Heck, we even volunteered for the experiment. We know the outcome is scientifically unchartered territory. This was our choice, not the government’s, not the General’s, not yours. We’ve made it our own.”

“Good. I just wanted to make sure we were still on the same page, before it’s too late.”

Her fingers brush his shoulder in the softest of feather-like touches, and they understand each other, support each other like birds of a feather flying into the sunrise. 

“Thanks,” Qrow mutters, leaning ever so slightly into her touch, grateful for her support. 

“I promise, whatever happens, that I’ll do everything in my power to ensure that Summer gets all the possible medical help so that she can give birth safely, that the government doesn’t interfere with Summer’s delivery, and that your daughter can grow up with her two healthy parents. You have my word, Qrow.”

It means a lot, and he’s not even sure he deserves it… he runs his fingers through his hair nervously, thinking at least Summer deserves it, their child deserves it…

“You promise?”

“I swear.”

She holds out her hand for him to shake, and he takes it.

* * *

Hope Branwen-Rose was born 106 years, two months, seven days, nine hours, forty-two minutes, and 13.11 seconds after the Fall.

Qrow remembers her tiny red fist like a scrunched up rose bud, wrapped tightly around his finger as if to never let go. 

He remembers her minuscule fingernails, digging like rose thorns into his skin, a tingling sensation he thought he’d never forget. 

He remembers his sensors counting each and every of the 168 only heartbeats her small heart ever beat. 

* * *

“A REAPER’s body could not support such strain, madam.”

“And a REAPER’s mind cannot support the strain of the aftermath,” Robyn sighs.

The doctors and nurses’ lab-coat-clad silhouettes cut out dark shadows against the curtain, but Qrow can’t see them clearly, there are too many things in the way, too many tubes, cables, machines, too many complex and sophisticated Atlesian contraptions supposed to support the life of Hope Branwen-Rose. Too many complex and sophisticated Atlesian contraptions that had failed to support even the short life of Hope Branwen-Rose. Just because she was born from REAPER parents.

“With the ELIXIR, every time a REAPER experiences grief, it’s as if they suffered for the first time. Summer’s mind is not prepared for this,” the Judge clarifies to the confused medical personnel.

Qrow shouldn’t even be there, watching that erratic shadow theatre. He should be on Rosetta with Taiyang and Raven, fighting in that battle that could win them the war. He wishes they’d give him his shot of ELIXIR, craves for the icy burn of the liquid down his veins so he can numb his pain, go back to the battlefield, go back to fighting for humanity, to fighting for the greater good.

“Summer Rose has hours… days at best,” a trembling voice utters. “Will you… go tell her? Tell Qrow?”

“They’ve heard us. They already know.”

* * *

“Where is Summer Rose?”

“Vanished… last I saw her, her vitals seemed to be stabilising.”

“But she cut herself from life support! She won’t survive!”

“Some birds go to hide away to die. But Summer? I think she wants to make a difference before she leaves this world.”

* * *

There is only a shred of cape. 

White on one side, blood-red on the other.

“She died a hero, Qrow.”

“She sacrificed herself to save us all.” 

“She took out the SALEM hive queen at the battle of Rosetta.”

“The REAPER I, Summer Rose, will be remembered as the martyr of humanity.”

But all he has left in his hands is a shred of cape. All he has left of his daughter, of her mother…

A shred of cape.

And a shred of air in his lungs to scream out all his anguish before the ELIXIR washes it away.

* * *

“Qrow, it’s not your fault.”

Robyn’s wrong it’s not true he could have followed her to Rosetta he could have been there to catch her to save her he should have been strong why did Summer keep it a secret why didn’t she recruit his help it didn’t have to end this way…

“She would have preferred it this way. She’d have preferred for you to live, rather than perish with her on Rosetta.”

She loved him. Summer Rose loved him. Robyn doesn’t say, but Qrow knows.

“Don’t beat yourself over it. The war is over, but everything’s left to be rebuilt. We have to keep moving on. You have to keep moving forward.”

But it’s too hard, it’s too fucking hard, and why can’t he get the ELIXIR already so he can move on, the ELIXIR he thirsts for craves wants desires needs needs needs...

“Hush, it’s over now birdie. It’s all over. Close your eyes. Tomorrow’s a new day.”

* * *

Like the phantom pain from a severed limb that should always have been part of him, the memories were always there, only reawakened.

Qrow blinks, and it hurts, everything fucking hurts.

“Tyrian,” Ironwood beckons softly, and the scorpion-tailed REAPER rushes in to complete his newest assignment. 

Qrow’s supporting himself on his sword like an old man on a cane, staggering under the weight of the pain. When Tyrian strikes, he stumbles forward and spins to block, the Augment’s weapons clattering against the flat of his blade. He parries again, and again, and again, reeling around like a drunken man. His adversary attacks relentlessly, and he’s too wary to move, too pained to do anything but rotate his sword to deflect an incoming stinger, then raise it again to block a spinning kick, a downward punch. 

In his flaring ache, he fails to see a silvery flicker as the scorpion tail wraps around his ankle and sends him flying against the desk like a ragdoll. Tyrian tries to take advantage of his imbalance to wrench the sword out of his grasp, but he simply uses his wrist magnet to draw it back to him, transforming it into a scythe as it flies toward his hand. 

The edge of the metal desk digs into the small of his back. And it hurts, and it’s almost nothing compared to the pain his memories carry, but it’s too much. The pain transmutes to anger, and he can’t take any of it any more, can’t take anything more that fate puts in his way. He’s got enough, red eyes flaring out with dangerous sparks. 

“I’ll kill you!” Qrow bellows.

“Oh, like you just killed Robyn? And yet they say _I’m_ the insane one.” 

Tyrian taunts him mercilessly, tail waving at his every word as he watches Qrow from across the room. The Augment doesn’t attack, patiently waiting for the scythe-wielding REAPER to collect himself off the floor under the expectant gaze of Ironwood, Clover, and Ruby. The scorpion-tailed man licks his lips in crazed anticipation for what should be the fight of the century. 

And the silver-eyed girl recognises it when Qrow pounces toward Tyrian and spins in mid-air, scythe blade tracing a single circle around him just like the first time they met. But she’s never seen him so unsteady, every movement misshapen by rage, and she’s never seen him so _fast_. None of them are too sure what occurred when Qrow lands, heavy scythe easily lifted in one hand while his other fist clutches something else. The end of Tyrian’s dark braid, neatly cleaved by the edge of his scythe. The scorpion-tailed part-android reaches for his hair tentatively, just in time for the top half of his head to slide down along a terrifyingly oblique clean cut. The rest of the REAPER’s body soon joins the severed half-skull on the carpeted floor, amidst a mess of blood, brains, metal, and still sizzling cables. 

The fight ended as fast as it started, and the Captain pales at the thought he’s never seen Qrow fight so brutally, to resort to such violence while his enemy wasn’t even directly attacking him. But the bloodlust still can’t be quenched, and the male scythe-wielder wishes he could kill Tyrian again, and again, and again. He stumbles scythe in hand, crimson eyes considering how to best tear apart the other REAPER’s corpse, knowing full well that it’s not enough, that it’ll never be enough…

“What did you do to him?!” Clover yells toward Ironwood. 

“That, Captain, is the sight of a REAPER who’s got nothing left to lose. REAPERs are the cutting edge of military technology, designed to kill, and that’s exactly what he did. This is exactly why Robyn and I decided to erase his memories of the loss of his child and her mother. This is exactly what we wanted to avoid, for him to be carried away by his emotions. Not to be able to control who he kills, or how he does it. Now you see we did the right thing.”

“You used him! You used him, and you sacrificed Tyrian just to prove your point!”

“Can _you_ say you’ve never used Qrow? The only difference is that my _point_ doesn’t agree with yours. Ask Ruby what she thinks. Ruby, would this Qrow, this bloodthirsty Qrow, torn apart by his grief have made a good makeshift father for you? Would you have liked to have this Qrow as a parent figure, as a protector of the peace and an agent of the government? Or do you prefer the previous Qrow, who was blissfully unaware of his past trauma and had his full mind focused on his duties?”

“He was always… humane,” she whispers hesitantly. “Even when he had his orders, he did his best not to hurt me… not to hurt Clover even...”

“And his humanity was what lost him,” the Consul finishes icily, “What you’re seeing here, this mindless monster no better than the Grimm feasting on a corpse, that’s not the product of his robot half. That’s the product of his human half. Android parts can be repaired or replaced, but a human mind... once it’s broken, it takes decades to heal if it ever does. Now you see Robyn and I did the right thing in erasing his memories. It was the right choice all along.”

Clover takes a careful step toward Qrow, one hand against the hilt of his weapon in case he needs it, without drawing it out. He struggles to support the blazing vermillion gaze, the unhinged eyes that don’t seem to recognise him, that bore right through him as if he were nothing more than prey, nothing more than another receptacle for the REAPER’s unbridled rage. 

“Qrow, you told me we can’t let our suffering define us. You remember that, I know you remember. No matter if you kill Tyrian again, if you kill me, if you destroy the rest of us, your daughter won’t come back to life. And neither will her mother. I know that your humanity’s still in there somewhere, that humanity that’s capable of such great things, such beautiful things… I know it’s hard, believe me or not, but I also know you’re strong. I’ve seen it, and I trust you, I believe in you… Qrow, I l-”

None of them expect the REAPER to grab a fistful of the Captain’s shirt and toss him toward the door with one hand as if he weighed nothing, before forcing the doors to close around his shoulders, keeping him trapped. Ruby gasps in surprise, wiping a single tear from the corner of her eye. She thought she’d found a father, a past, a direction for the future, and she’d lost it all as soon as Qrow had regained his own past. She thought she wasn’t alone, and now she doesn’t know any more, everything is uncertain, and she doesn’t even know if any of them will survive, if Qrow won’t terminate them all in his fit of maddened rage, without even recognising he ever knew them. 

“What now?” she challenges the Consul angrily. “Do you have a plan, or do you want him to kill us all just to prove a point?”

“There is always a contingency plan,” Ironwood replies heavily, bringing a finger to his earpiece. “Winter, you may come in.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this a good place to end the chapter? I don’t know *shrugs*. Mostly it’s too long and I’m done with it and I want to save some stuff for the next chapter, which will likely be the last before the epilogue. Young Qrow and Summer’s adventures in space might be my new fav thing tbh. And this may well be my favourite chapter. WINTER IS COMING, guys.  
> Okay I’ll see myself out.  
> Next (last real non-epilogue) chapter on Saturday xx


	10. Munin, Hugin, Odin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hugin and Munin fly each day  
> over the spacious earth.  
> I fear for Hugin, that he come not back,  
> yet more anxious am I for Munin.”  
> ~ Poetic Edda

The doors blast open, sending Clover flying to the other side of the room as Winter Schnee floats in, eyes ablaze, feet levitating off the ground as lightning fizzles in her open palms. Qrow looks upward at her, eliciting an immediate rictus of rage across her even features. 

“Traitor,” she hisses, before drawing her sword and diving straight for him. 

As Qrow seemingly fortunately stumbles aside to dodge her full-speed attack, the onlookers notice the blood staining Winter’s blade - what had occurred to Clover’s team? How easily had she taken care of them, judging by her still impeccably white outfit and orderly hair? Ruby can sense the Captain visibly shaking by her side, consciously prying his eyes away from the crimson-tainted blade, not daring to think about the blood of his comrades he’d fought alongside for so many years. 

Qrow tries to close the office doors around Winter, but she easily breaks out and lunges forward again, attacking in a whirlwind of slashes and thrusts. She accelerates as fast as she stops in her steps, immediately redirecting her momentum for another strike. Qrow moves more fluidly, footsteps staggering along tortuous trajectories as he evades, blocks and brings his broadsword around in a full lethal arc. 

Their blades collide again and again, with such force Ruby’s never witnessed in her life. She’s watched REAPERs fight REAPERs, but this is different. Qrow’s rage is boundless, all of his inhibitions blown away like feathers in the wind, not hesitating to use his impact over the environment against his opponent. Under his control, a ceiling lamp overheats and explodes, providing a burst of fiery heat tumbling toward Winter that melts some newly formed ice crystals floating around her raised hands. But it’s not enough, she’s the kind who can take on four people able to defeat REAPERs at once and brush them off as if they were mere lint on her pristine white coat. 

With a wave of her blade, she hurls the remaining ice shards toward her enemy, powered by some advanced nanotechnology Qrow’s never even seen before. His weapon slashes in quick succession, blocking and deflecting successive sharp fragments, sending some flying back toward her. But the storm intensifies, pushing him back until he has to plant his sword into the floor to stabilise himself, his face only protected by his elbow whose sleeve quickly falls to tatters. Pressing a switch by the side of his weapon, he transforms it with his blade still impaled into the carpet, the expanding scythe handle propelling him straight toward his opponent’s levitating form. Before she can react, he kicks her into the ceiling before slamming her against a gigantic stone pillar supporting the ceiling. Rebounding elastically against Ironwood’s desk, he lunges forward to punch her, but she jabs her shorter sword into the wall, redirecting his fist toward the column that shatters against his ringed knuckles. 

Both half-robotic adversaries tumble onto the floor, briefly disoriented by the falling dust and debris - as Qrow reaches out his hand to call for his weapon, he barely has time to spot a cinder block tossed by Winter in his direction. He splits it with a thrust of his sword before it can reach his head, but fails to avoid a high-heeled shoe diving straight his head as the white-haired woman front-flips elegantly onto him. Qrow raises his broadsword just in time to block both her blades as he scrambles to his feet, before both adversaries break into a new flurry of lightning-fast attacks. 

Ruby’s silver eyes search for an opening, but they can’t find any as the adversaries dash across the room, too elusive to be caught or stopped. The Captain recovers by her side, enough to rush into the battle tossing out his fishing line. But the growing cold emanating from every pore of Winter’s skin is too strong, immediately freezing the rope and rendering it ineffective. The former soldier has to let go of the handle before the cold can scald his vulnerable fingertips. 

He takes a deep breath, considering joining the fray again, facing the rising tornado forming around the airborne Winter. Under the full force of the snarling storm, Qrow’s weapon can barely reach her, and he can only use the flat of his sword as a shield against the icy tempest. Before Clover can think of how to intervene, his ears are distracted by a sound behind him - a rustle as the Consul calls for an emergency airship, planning his escape. 

“How dare you run away?” the Captain snarls, using his frozen hook to wrench Ironwood’s Scroll out of his hands. 

He slashes, parries, strikes again, wielding his weapon as a whip to force James backwards, slowly but surely. The Consul draws a gun from his holster, but he struggles to find an angle to shoot Clover as the icy fishing line dances restlessly before his eyes. Finally, a bullet hits the rope, causing the brittle frozen cable to shatter into a myriad of icy pieces. Grunting with rage, the Captain races toward his enemy, using the pole part of his weapon to deflect the barrel of his firearm before grappling both his arms and pinning him against the giant glass window. 

“This is for the greater good!” James snaps back through gritted teeth. “What’s left of humanity needs a leader who’s alive.”

“Humanity deserves a leader who won’t leave anyone behind, no matter how broken they are!”

“Excellent philosophical point, Captain, but it won’t matter if I let my REAPERs run loose and destroy everything in their path, for they’ll be no one left to protect. I have to serve the good of the many, not the few.”

“It’s not because you take all the brokenness onto yourself that it becomes right to decide that all other things broken don’t deserve to live! That it becomes right to sacrifice Qrow, or anyone else for that matter!” 

“Your emotions cloud your judgement.”

“This is what makes us different from SALEM!”

“This is what caused your downfall.”

As he talks, he manages to extract his hand from Clover’s grasp and press his other rifle to the Captain’s temple. 

Ruby flinches when the sound of cracking glass echoes through the office as Clover slams James into the panoramic window, perhaps attempting to take the Consul with him into certain death. That could be the Captain’s last resort, she guesses, after his whole team was massacred by Winter, after the one he loved seemed to have forgotten everything about him, forgotten everything about love but loss and overwhelming pain. 

“Wait!” the red-caped girl screams, and before any of the adults react she dives in with a swipe of her scythe, severing Ironwood’s gun-wielding hand from the rest of his body.

“You...” James stammers, eyes brimming with rage as he turns to face her, visibly displaying tremendous effort to ignore the pain. 

But it’s too late, Clover’s foot already kicks the firearm toward Ruby who promptly takes it into her hands. 

“Ruby, this is your choice now,” the Captain speaks simply, remembering Yang’s words and unwilling to influence her as he watches her next move. “Choose carefully.”

Hesitantly, she points the barrel at Ironwood, fingers trembling ever so slightly before she eventually speaks. 

“What happened to the REAPER III, Raven Branwen? Did you sacrifice her too and lie about it, or did she manage to escape?”

The question surprises both James and Clover, of all the secrets that have been revealed, of all those left to reveal… Why did she choose that one? But they can barely guess, from a corner of their field of vision, that Qrow slightly stumbles at the mention of Raven as he stands before the storm, icy winds tattering the sorry remains of his cape, of his clothes, biting the pale skin to reveal rough metal parts underneath. He’s still standing, barely, remnants of his hands still clutching his sword, facing Winter who levitates in silence, facing the growing tempest unleashed against him. Perhaps Raven’s name stirs the last shards of his humanity, perhaps it reawakens his hope, however shredded after losing all those he held dear, for a loved one he might not have lost yet. 

It’s a gamble, and Ruby can tell from the slightest glint of approval in Clover’s eyes that the Captain’s a man who likes to try his luck. If the answer can spark any positive feelings in Qrow, then they may have a last chance. If not…

“I don’t know. I know many secrets, but this secret is Raven’s own. No one knows what she has become, if she’s still alive. During her last Mars mission, she cut off all communications with us without so much as a thought.”

“Is it true?” the silver-eyed girl speaks shakily. 

“I’ve told you about so many more sensitive secrets today, why would I lie now? Do you have any more questions?”

His voice is smooth as silk, hard as steel, as if he’d already forgotten his injury, as if he didn’t fear death by the red-clad girl’s hand, and both Clover and Ruby cannot help but admire his stoic heroism. 

“No. I have no more questions.”

At those words, she cocks the gun and aims for the Consul’s head, blinking for clearer sight amongst the tears welling down her youthful cheeks. 

Behind her, Winter doesn’t fail to note Qrow’s slightest distraction at the mention of Raven’s fate, or lack thereof, and springs toward him faster than ever before, balancing atop his sword before drawing her own weapon, aiming for his throat. This is her mission, the job she’s on Earth to do, and she’ll stop at nothing. She’s seen so many lives start, so many lives end from Amity, and this worthless life of a REAPER having lost all he loved, all his sanity, all his humanity is just one more life. She’ll stop at nothing… until an immediately recognisable white-clad silhouette erupts at the door, painstakingly supporting the weight of a larger blonde woman. 

“... Winter?” Weiss says.

* * *

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Ironwood reprimands Ruby almost paternally. “After all, I’m the only thing that stands between the people and SALEM.”

“What do you mean?” Clover gasps. “We defeated SALEM. We lost so many lives doing so, but it was to make sure that the Hive Queen was destroyed!”

“Summer Rose defeated the Hive Queen at the battle of Rosetta...” Ruby recalls. 

“How do you know? Were you there, either of you?”

“I was… recovering,” Clover admits, raising a hand to his prosthetic heart.

“Summer did die a martyr, but the Hive Queen wasn’t killed. Simply because the Hive Queen  _ cannot  _ be killed. She accepted to retreat, after making a truce with us.”

“You made a deal with the enemy?” the veteran snarls, incredulous.

“For the good of the many, Ozpin and I did. It ended the war, saving so many lives. In exchange, SALEM got the third Consul seat to weigh into our politics.”

“Lionheart was never...”

“Lionheart was always a cover, the name of a long-dead politician, never seen since his ‘Mercury mission’. And we hide ourselves from Grimm by suppressing our negative emotions, or at least, to work on it with her guidance.”

“So the ELIXIR, the REAPER project, Qrow’s daughter, and after that, the BEACON project. The goal was always to shield humanity from broadcasting negative feelings, to shield us from SALEM,” Ruby realises slowly. “You were always protecting us, trying to do the right thing. Your heart was always in the right place...”

“But it changes nothing!” Clover yells, to her astonishment. “It. Changes. Nothing. It’s too late now.”

And the former soldier charges at Ironwood with all of his strength, pummeling him with his bare fists, sweaty, bloodied fists, strong biceps rustling under the desperate strain. It’s too late now, it’s too late to stop, it’s too late to go back. Clover’s spent so many years formulating his plan, making it come to fruition. He’s been through so many nightmares, made so many sacrifices to see his dream come true. If he stops now… his suffering will have been for nothing. His team will have died for nothing. Qrow will have lost his mind for nothing. 

All of him, as a Captain, as a person will become null and void, for his dream will have become but a hollow shell. So whatever’s left of him has to push through, like a puppet on strings dancing along a well-rehearsed choreography. He grabs Ironwood’s arm and swings him around, causing his metal elbow joint to partially rip with a sickening sound of torn cables. And holds the Consul in a chokehold, forcefully pressing his cheek against the panoramic window.

“I wonder who’s more of a robot, between all of us,” the Atlesian politician muses with difficulty. “Likely the one who sticks to his pre-programmed plan even though it doesn’t make any more sense.”

“This was my dream,” Clover repeats raggedly like a broken automaton. ”This is all I have now. Harriet, Marrow, Elm, Vine… they’re gone, but they’d have preferred to take on SALEM again, the enemy we know and already pushed back, rather than endure another day of your heartless politics. This is what they’d have wanted. This is all I have left. All I have left of who I am. It’s too late to stop. What else would you want me to do, James? Give up? Which would just amount to the same as ceasing to exist? Should I shoot myself in the head? Throw myself out the window?”

“That’s not a half bad idea.”

James swivels around with full force, kicking at his opponent’s knee to make him lose his balance and stumble from his own momentum into the already cracked glass. Ruby can do nothing but watch in terror as the window breaks into a rain of shards, and Clover falls. He sinks through the air, into the immense void from the top of the highest tower in the world. And all his lucky fingers can find to cling onto life is the bottom edge of the window, like the last four-leaved shamrock on the sharpest side of a barren cliff. 

“Clover!” Qrow yells, running to the ledge immediately, entirely oblivious of the distracted Winter behind him. 

* * *

“Winter?” the heiress voices hesitantly, silver brow furrowing in confusion. “You’re… here?”

And Weiss knows, she’s known it all along. It’s never been about vengeance, about debts and royal tests, about defying their father, about clearing the family name. It’s always been about love, about what she cares for, what she believes in, what can help her carve out her own path. It’s always been about Winter, how much she admires her, envies her, respects her, wants to be her, wants to be with her, wants to be respected by her, wants to love her, be loved by her, be held in her arms…

“I’ve missed you so much,” she sighs, running forward to hold her sister in her warm embrace, ignoring the hard cold metal that makes up her body and the debris and blood marring her weapon and outfit. 

“Weiss,” her sister echoes.

And to Weiss, it means everything and then some. 

And Winter knows, she’s known it all along. She knows this is Weiss Schnee, despite the half-dried blood covering part of her face. She knows this is her younger sister, heiress to their father’s empire, aspiring bot-fighting champion - she knows it all, because she’s seen it all, done it all. Winter knows she’s seen so many lives end, so many lives start, and that shouldn’t stand in the way of her mission. Her one job, her last job, her only job. She knows Weiss is just one more of those lives, that her personal feelings can’t disrupt her job, that the needs of the few, the needs of one Winter Schnee cannot get in the way of the needs of the many. She knows Weiss is an obstacle between herself and the traitor, and she knows how strong, how dangerous Weiss has become, how near-unstoppable she stands now. 

Winter knows what she has to do. 

It was quick, painless. Winter’s blade accelerated through the heiress’s heart, then stopped dead just as fast as it started. It elicits just the slightest of gasps from Weiss, cut short. When her sister’s body falls off the blade, cerulean eyes open like round stained glass windows, her chest only wears a small red dot, spreading along the fine fabric of her dress like a lone, mourning poppy on her lapel. 

Winter knew what she had to do, she’d known it all along.

* * *

Clover wouldn’t be able to tell why he’s still grasping the edge of the window. Why he’s still clinging onto life, as if he still had a mission to accomplish, as if he weren’t just the empty vessel of a lost dream rendered nonsensical. As if what was left of his vision weren’t as hollow, cold, broken, meaningless as his unwinding little heart. As if he still had something or someone to love, to fight for.

Some say survival instinct is what makes us human, and not robotic, robots only being programmed to preserve the lives of humans they serve. Some say on the contrary that all species have survival instinct, that it is the basest, vilest thing even SALEM has as a hive. Some say it’s how we react before death, before the fear of death that makes us different from SALEM, that makes us human.

But Clover doesn’t care, for when he hears Qrow’s voice speak his name, everything falls into place, and he feels at home.

* * *

“You monster!” Yang screams, rushing toward Winter at full speed.

Winter, with all her enhanced reflexes and strength, barely has time to react. Time seems to freeze to a stop as the furious blonde rears her fist for a punch - and then, time truly freezes. Everything freezes. The tempest intensifies, until the column of swirling tornado around Winter settles into an impenetrable wall of solid ice. Yang’s fist rebounds ineffectively against the indestructible surface, a sickening crack echoing from her knuckles or perhaps her wrist. In her pain and her rage, she barely hears Ruby behind her, stabbing her scythe blade into the tiniest dent Yang’s punch created in the ice wall. The crack she makes isn’t even wide enough even for the smallest of birds to pass, as the frozen air currents from inside claw mercilessly at Ruby’s face, but words can still fly through. 

“Winter… Can you hear me? I know you can. I know why you’re not answering, what you must be feeling. The fear, the remorse… everything. I know what it’s like.”

No answer. 

“I didn’t know Weiss. I wish I could tell you I knew her, that she’d be alive in my memories, but I can’t. I do know, however, that despite not knowing me she fought for me, for our cause. She lived in Atlas, but she fought alongside the Augments, alongside Mantle and the Shambles, for those who were abandoned by the government, for those who were left behind.”

Nothing. 

“I don’t know why she did that. I wish I could say I knew… but I have no idea. All I know is that she sacrificed herself, in the end, for love, for you, for humanity, for  _ your  _ humanity. She knew that she could die as soon as she agreed to fight for our cause, and yet she never hesitated. I know Weiss would have liked it, if she didn’t sacrifice herself for nothing. If her sacrifice helped you remember some of your humanity.”

Still nothing. Winter has seen it all, done it all… how can a few words through an infinitesimal interstice of ice change anything?

“You must have seen a lot, been through a lot. You must have been alone, so cold up there in Amity. I wish I could relate, but I can’t. I know of loneliness, of being one of a kind, everyone has their own version. But you know what I’m thinking? Your father must have paid a big price, for you to be killed off so cleanly, so painlessly, and then to be revived as a REAPER. Not just any REAPER, but the strongest of all the REAPERs and the safest of them all, all the way up there in your observation space station. You know how I know that? Because for some days Qrow thought he was my father, and we weren’t sure, and it turns out he never was. But he risked his life, his mission, everything for me, because that’s what fathers do.”

Project BEACON products like Ruby are known for being erratic in times of crisis, so whatever Ruby rambles on next, no one can predict, not even the ramified semi-robotic mind of Winter Schnee… but why should it matter? It’s not like she’ll say something Winter doesn’t already know.

“I could tell you you’re playing straight into your father’s hands, if you live this REAPER’s life he intended for you, if you keep following orders blindly, orders from a government full of his puppets. I could tell you Weiss would have preferred you to carve out your own path for yourself… but you know what? That’s not necessary. Because I know you know, and I know your humanity knows. I know you could’ve killed Yang just like you killed your sister. But you didn’t, you just put up this wall to block her out. That you could kill me right now, putting your sword blade through that crack if you wanted. But you’re not doing it, you’re not even blocking the hole to stop me. Now I could knock this wall down, you could try and stop me but I wouldn’t budge until it’s done, until I’ve torn it down to shreds, until I’m through to you, you understand? Not until I’m standing there, right in front of you, in the cold with you, just to prove to you that you’re too humane to kill me then, just because I’m standing between you and Qrow. _ But that is not necessary _ , and you know why? Not because you know everything, because you’ve seen everything, done everything. But because your sister’s reminded you of that through her sacrifice. That feelings can be acknowledged, that they do matter even in the face of life and death, in the face of the grand scheme. That it’s okay to question your values, to question who you are, that it’s okay not to feel okay, and that it’s even okay to show it.”

No answer. Nothing but a wordless cry, too un-robotic, too human, too torn by anguish, by pain, by regret, by raw emotion, finally released after a lifetime of loneliness in the silence of space. 

And the ice wall, just as fast as it formed, falls apart, freeing the storm at its core.

* * *

What use is it, a small voice wonders at the back of Qrow’s mind as he braces for a new wave of pure cold, simultaneously fending off Ironwood who stands between him and Clover. What use is it to be so strong, to wield the full power bestowed by Ironwood upon the REAPERs and then some, if it won’t protect those you love? If it couldn’t keep Hope alive? If it couldn’t keep Summer from running away to a battle she knew she wouldn’t come back from? If it can’t keep Clover from falling to a certain death, if it can’t keep his heart stable and beating? What use is it, to fight forces of destiny that are simply unfair, simply nonsensical? Why fight, why resist the rage, the despair, why cling onto life, onto memories, onto his mind with the strength of our bloodied dirty nails? 

So why is he still standing, while the eyes of Ironwood, the eyes of his maker almost consider him with  _ concern _ , while he could let the storm carry him away, into the void, into oblivion? Stupid survival instinct? Stupid, illogical, impossible desire not to let his grief define him, because someone told him so, not that he remembers why under the weight of all the suffering, of all the memories? For whom is he still fighting, if he himself is beyond saving, the last fragment of hope for forgiveness, for redemption having left his heart? 

However slim the probability is, as his mind spirals out to estimate, he still stands for those he hasn’t lost yet, for those he’s too afraid to lose. For Raven, if she’s still out there somehow, alone and free in the vastness of space. For Summer even, after all Ironwood never said she died, and he never saw a body, only a shred of tattered cape. For Ruby, even though she was never his daughter, she deserves protection and love, and even if she doesn’t he doesn’t give a damn. For Clover, who’d lost everything, his friends, his heart, his dream… no, who  _ was losing everything _ , but could still be saved, could still be forgiven and loved, even though every step of the way toward recovery would be so hard, so fucking hard. 

And for everyone else, everyone he used to know, everyone he’d never known, everyone human and otherwise who could remind him of the smallest shrapnel of humanity buried deep inside of him. 

His mind is busy computing probabilities as soon as he sees it - the wave of absolute cold flowing ineluctably toward Ironwood, able to freeze the human half of him to stone in a mere fraction of a second. He sees the fear in the Consul’s blue eyes, the recognition that it’s too late, the resignation to face his fate. Qrow knows the odds if he doesn’t intervene, but what if he does? He has to gamble, he has to try his luck. 

Qrow blinks, and he remembers. That night on the roof, how he dropped Ruby because he trusted Clover, trusted the humanity in his hardened veteran’s soul…

He throws his scythe along its signature spinning motion, and it bounces off the ceiling before hitting Ironwood in the stomach, hilt first. The impact pushes him safely out of the way of the cold wave, out of the window into the thin Atlas air. He falls, and Qrow barely dares to look down at the ledge. 

He doesn’t need to look, because he trusts Clover. Just as he did that night on the roof. 

One bloodied hand still clutching the bottom of the windowsill, the Captain has his other fingers securely wrapped around James’s forearm, breaking his fall, preventing him from tumbling to his inescapable death. Tears well up Qrow’s eyes; he always trusted Clover and yet the man manages to blow his mind away every single time. He wishes he could express how illogically proud he is of the soldier, for remaining a humane person, after losing everything and more, after losing all meaning to his dream. For reminding Qrow of what matters most, of the way he thought he’d lost in the stormy night of his endless grief. For saving even his worst enemy while holding on for dear life by a few inches of broken glass and misshapen metal on a shattered window. 

But the REAPER doesn’t have time, there will never be enough time, and the ripped elbow of Ironwood’s arm creak dangerously under his weight as more cables snap, bringing him a hair’s breadth closer to falling. Clover’s arms probably can’t hold out that long, powerful muscles straining to support both the soldier’s own weight and the Consul’s half-robotic body by clinging onto the smallest fragment of a ledge. Blue eyes, deeper blue than the cloudy Atlas sky will ever be, look up at Clover, take in the strong arm holding him up despite everything, taking in the mess of chest scars and the still-beating mechanical heart amidst them. 

“You… still have...” James murmurs.

And they understand, they all understand in the silence only punctuated by the steady pulsation of the Captain’s slowly unravelling prosthetic. In the silence only interrupted by a single gunshot from Ironwood’s remaining weapon. In the silence of Ironwood’s fall into the endless void, the rest of his body detached from the forearm clutched uselessly in Clover’s hand after the Consul’s last bullet finished destroying James’s robotic elbow joint, finished confirming that the broken shouldn’t be allowed to live, their leader making no exception. 

And it’s over, suddenly it’s all over now, and still Qrow still doesn’t have any time to lose. He attracts his weapon to him using his electromagnet, allowing Clover to cling onto the shaft to be brought back to the room, to the office’s carpeted floor littered with broken ice and glass. Qrow’s enhanced arms easily help him to his feet, but immediately the Captain’s knees give out under his weight, under all the effort, the pain, and the injuries, forcing Qrow to crouch down to cushion his fall. Worried red eyes scan Clover’s face, soon met a reassuring aqua gaze, and the faintest hint of a smile. Qrow allows himself to grin back, and it’s been so long he’s forgotten how good it feels. Clover’s features have never looked so exhausted, yet so relaxed as he finally finds himself nested in the warmth of the REAPER’s arms, their fingers safely intertwined. 

“I’m sorry...” Qrow begins. 

“I know.” 

And that’s enough, for now it is. 

For who knows what the future still has in store for them, who knows what wars are left to fight, with Ironwood no longer there to hold up the pact with SALEM, with the whole Atlas network paralysed, with Robyn dead and the ELIXIR facility defaced, with Clover’s still silently shattering heart… Qrow’s vaguely aware of footsteps behind him, a whole horde of footsteps following the Augment Queen’s clicking heels as haggard silhouettes stagger forward into the light of the shattered panoramic window. Blake having apparently freed the Augment prisoners from the prisons, many things have been set into motion, and the current political situation devolving into a new, uncertain, experimental, flawed, human system seems inevitable. 

“Ilia,” the monarch calls through her earpiece. “Shut everything off. Let Atlas understand that this era is ending, and tomorrow is a new day.”

And Qrow feels the darkness spreading at the back of his mind as the Atlas network is shut down, and boosts the growing shadows until the entire, immense, tentacular grid turns suddenly silent. Outside the panoramic window, the bright holograms illuminating the towers flicker away, revealing the bare iron and concrete skeleton of the city underneath. Atlas has never looked so stripped naked, so devoid of light even in the night until a faint glimmer of natural sunlight graces the buildings, and that changes almost nothing, and that changes everything. Soon, only the life-supporting systems like those keeping Atlas afloat are still operating, and the once-futuristic sky city is but a wary raft adrift amidst the clouds. 

Other footsteps echo at the scythe-wielding REAPER’s side, and this time he doesn’t look up, he’s too tired for that. Winter barely shoots them a glance, avoiding Qrow’s gaze as she jumps out the window and soars through the sky, back toward Amity, back into space, leaving only a trail of pale blue behind her. Ruby still watches in silence, carefully extracting herself from a half-conscious Yang’s damaged arms, the blonde having instinctively used her body to shield the silver-eyed girl from the icy storm. Ruby walks to the window before setting a hand onto Qrow’s shoulder, a simple, warm touch worth a thousand words. 

Her hand is pulled down by gravity, yet it also releases weight from his shoulders, like ascending hot currents helping a bird take flight. And whatever the future has in store, whichever are the probabilities his mind is too worn out to compute, he knows they can face it together, for as long they can trust, as long as they can love, they still have so much to fight for. 

* * *

_ Amity_wschnee: @C2_ozpin @C3_llionheart Atlas has fallen _

_ C2_ozpin: Not again? _

_ Amity_wschnee: The Atlas network is down. _

_ The Judge and all of the REAPERs on Earth have either been destroyed or defected. _

_ Ironwood is no more. _

_ What do we do? _

_ C3_llionheart: We wait. _

_ What a fascinating social experiment. _

_ C2_ozpin: Thank you for your input, SALEM. _

_ Amity_wschnee: SALEM?! _

_ I thought that the Hive Queen was destroyed!?! _

_ C2_ozpin: Glad to see you think for yourself, Winter.  _

_ Amity_wschnee: What do we do? @C2_ozpin _

_ C2_ozpin: we wait _

_ There are wounds only time can heal, and wounds even time cannot heal _

_ There are paths that were burnt away to ashes _

_ And the rainfall soldered the ashes together, rendering them hard as stone _

_ And more rain fell, and life started to grow again over the ashes of the past _

_ Timid, haphazard, though the thick hard ground, through the freezing storm and the burning sun _

_ But life still tries to grow again, and all we can do is watch,  _

_ and learn. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaand done. Next chapter is just fluff. (and smut). I'm tired.  
> The beginning of next week will be hectic for me, so expect the next and last update around next Saturday. Until then, stay safe and posted xx


	11. Epilogue - From dust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: hand-wavy politics. Also narration swears a bit, pardon my language ^^

Clover doesn’t mind that Qrow watches him shower. 

The REAPER says he wants to make sure that the new components they added to the prosthetic heart don’t rust at contact with water, that they don’t fall apart with movement. And Clover’s fine with that. He’s fine with Qrow watching each translucent droplet pouring down his chiselled shoulders, flowing down the web of canals formed by the scars across his sculptural chest, raining down his metal heart and leaving the faintest trace of tears. He’s fine with Qrow being there when he methodically cleans each of his wounds, old and new, wounds that time can heal, and scars that will always remain, carefully, painstakingly. He’s fine with Qrow seeing him in such a vulnerable state, seeing him doing such a  _ normal  _ task and yet finding each step so painful and hard. 

After all, every step of the way is hard. 

Every step of the way is hard, it’s fucking hard. They haven’t found a way to fix Clover’s heart once and for all, because everything that comes from dust’s simply destined to return to dust and that’s how thermodynamics goes. They’ve only found tricks to delay the engine’s inevitable breakdown, changing part after part to make the prosthetic last just a little longer - hour after hour, day after day, month after month. Months have passed and they still can’t be sure the contraption will be beating tomorrow. Qrow sits for hours each day holding the heart in the palm of his hand, using his ultra-developed cybernetic sensors to identify cracks, flaws, damaged parts. He wishes he could replace them, but his fingers shake too much from his ELIXIR withdrawal.

And that’s hard, that’s fucking hard too. He has to tell Clover, to watch him work on mending his own heart, to watch those strong hands delicately cut, stitch, weld the parts Qrow identified as defective. Because with how broken they are, that’s something they can only do together. Sometimes while he focuses on the intricate handiwork, the soldier can sense the scythe-wielder’s breath hitch, scarlet eyes gazing at him tenderly, taking in his precise gestures, his concentrated frown, his  _ everything _ . In those moments Clover just wants to stop what he’s doing and kiss his wide-eyed Qrow senseless, because they both know they don’t have that much time left, that they have to make the most of it.

Every step of the way is fucking hard, day after day, night after night. ELIXIR withdrawal is living hell, and Qrow wasn’t sure he’d be able to pull through. Heck, he still isn’t sure, he still keeps waking in the night, drenched in sweat and tears, staring at his palms like they were drenched in blood, as if his fingers were clutching a shred of tattered cape. Clover wants to tell him that it’s okay, that everything’s gonna be okay, that he’s been through similar things and he can relate. He wishes he could tell him all that, but he can’t, and it hurts, it goddamn hurts. Qrow’s not only killed so many and seen so many die while carrying out the government’s orders, he’s also lost his daughter and her mother, and Clover can’t say he’ll ever fully comprehend that kind of pain. All he can do is whisper sweet nothings into Qrow’s ear, caress his feathery hair and his thin, lithe shoulders in an attempt to nurse the REAPER back to sleep in the safe haven of his strong arms. 

And it’s not like Qrow’s the only one to experience nightmares. Clover’s trauma still isn’t going anywhere, and recent events, the loss of his whole team, the news about SALEM, have only added to his burden. Sometimes it’s neither of them, it’s Ruby whimpering and sobbing in her sleep in the bedroom next door, recalling whichever horrors she experienced or witnessed in the BEACON programme, whichever battles that unfolded more recently. By the time Clover or Qrow try to help her, they can’t fall asleep anymore, and all they can do is stare out the panoramic window of their apartment at Atlas and Mantle shimmering in their slumber, waiting out the sunrise. 

Every step of the way is hard, because they have to rebuild fucking Atlas from dust, from the ground up in the wake of their haphazard coup. The looming threat of SALEM certainly doesn’t help, and while she has yet to manifest her presence they know the day will come, sooner or later. Blake has heavy responsibilities in dealing with that, as the acting leader of whatever the makeshift transitional government is called until they figure out something. But they still have to figure out something, and that’s hard, that’s flawed, it will never be perfect, and they disagree every step of the way. Clover and Blake think they should bring back the fallen heroes who fought by their side as REAPERs, or at least those for which there is enough to salvage. Qrow’s not convinced, not wishing for anyone to have to go through the ELIXIR again, though hoping no one else should have to face the dreaded withdrawal. Ruby’s uncertain, she’d have preferred if they also rebuilt Cinder and Watts as they were destroyed simply following orders, but Yang’s still recovering from extensive burns Cinder inflicted so it’s not that simple. Of course, all these disagreements only further drive a wedge into their budding relationship. 

And if that weren’t enough, relationships are hard too. Clover’s never heard Qrow say ‘I forgive you’, and he can only guess the REAPER still feels deceived, still feels like he’s been used and abused all his life, and will never be able to trust anyone having lied to him or tampered with his mind. No, all Clover gets is ‘I want to forgive you’ and ‘I wish I could’, and that’s all he ever hopes to hear, and that’s enough to bring joy to his mechanical heart. Of course he yearns to prove himself, to redeem himself in Qrow’s eyes and earn his trust, but who knows what the future will bring. Of course his heart still misses a beat sometimes when Qrow pushes him away while he’s trembling under the effects of his withdrawal, teal eyes reliving flashbacks of the grief-addled REAPER murdering Tyrian in cold blood and tossing him across the room without even recognising him.

But for each of those instants of tension, there are dozens of simpler moments, soft touches, gentle hugs, stolen glances from crimson eyes brimming with admiration, respect, support, passion, dare he say love… such as the way Qrow is staring at him right now as he showers. 

Clover’s a lucky man, smiling to himself softly as he wipes out the droplets and condensed vapour on the shower’s glass door to have a better look at Qrow’s face, at those breathtaking vermillion irises gazing back at him. As his fingers brush against the glassy surface, the half-robot instantly understands his intentions and more than obliges, joining him under the shower. The veteran shudders with delight as nimble fingers massage his shoulder blades, rubbing the water-streaked skin in smooth, soothing circles. The gentle pressure of hands rummaging his back is soon joined by agile lips, ever complaining as they waste no time peppering his shoulders with kisses. 

“You taste like soap.”

“That’s kind of the point of showering,” Clover chuckles, never getting tired of his partner’s endless cynicism. “At least I’m clean.”

“‘Not so sure, lemme check,” Qrow retorts, rubbing more shampoo into Clover’s hair while his mouth is busy licking and biting the base of his neck, swiping his tongue across the curve of his collarbone. 

“Shouldn’t you clean yourself?” 

“Nope, I take pride in my dusty old crow reputation.”

Clover chuckles at the heartfelt jibe, marvelling at the way Qrow becomes ever so slightly more humorous every time, day by day, baby step by baby step, and that’s what matters most.

“Hmm, now I wonder if you live up to your reputation,” the veteran teases back gently, revelling in the sound of the REAPER’s light laughter mingling with the crystalling tumble of warm shower water. 

“Why don’t you turn around and see for yourself?”

The human’s broad shoulders swivel smoothly within Qrow’s humid embrace, the contact of wet skin against wet skin intoxicating as he picks up his partner’s hand for an open-mouthed kiss to the middle of his open palm. The lines of the part-human’s hand are darkened with grime after a day in the workshop, a day of trying more tricks to fix Clover’s sorry heart, but the veteran ignores it, moving on to kiss each one of the REAPER’s fingers, to make sure that the shape of those deft digits remains imprinted in his memory and nothing, not water, not even time, can wash them away. 

“Tastes dusty enough to me,” he slurs, planting a wet kiss onto Qrow’s wrist just above the barely visible scar where they’d reattached his hand that fateful night, and feeling the half-android deliciously shivering under the contact. 

He trails humid kisses all the way up Qrow’s arm, following the protruding veins that guide down the water droplets along the sinewy curves of the lean, strong muscles. Said muscles stir gently against his lips as the scythe-wielder lifts his hand to grip Clover’s shoulder, pulling him closer, wanting more of him, all of him. The veteran doesn’t fail to notice his partner’s fingers grasping him firmly with only the faintest trace of near-undetectable trembling, even if just for now, and he hums in approval, more approval than words can ever express. 

Neither can tell who first initiates the kiss, for their lips collide halfway under the deafening quietness of pouring hot rain. The water keeps washing his lover’s taste away, and that only eggs Clover further, onto requesting deeper access to fully relish in Qrow’s flavour. A gasp escapes the REAPER’s throat as an agile tongue runs across his teeth, and the soldier only takes a second away to stare at his handiwork, at the beautiful, so beautifully responsive man before him and kiss him again. 

Attracted into his gravity, Clover’s hands move up to cup Qrow’s jaw, strong thumbs caressing the soaked stubble before fingers tangle into the rebellious raven hair, eliciting the most delectable moans at his every tug. As the human’s eyelids slide shut, he feels a half-robot hand fidget with his quickly hardening nipples, rubbing with a maddeningly erratic tempo that sets his expecting senses ablaze, his entire body fiery under the tumbling water. Long, calloused, dusty fingers wander across the wet, warm expanses of Clover’s chiselled chest, feather-light touches mapping the soft, sensitive scar tissue. For a fraction of a searing second, the REAPER’s fingertips blindly find the soldier’s prosthetic, metal rebounding against metal through thin skin… and the veteran can’t stop images flashing against the black of his closed eyelids, the memories of pain flooding his chest suddenly resurfacing. 

Burly arms push Qrow into the glass shower wall, a single, large hand pinning both of his wrists above his head and securely away from Clover’s heart. The REAPER’s lips let out a soft moan as his shoulder blades meet the soft, slick surface, and the soldier hardly dares to meet bashful vermillion eyes realising the harm Qrow’d done, the lurking nightmares he’d awakened… 

“Hey, don’t beat yourself over it,” the soldier exhales, leaning in to drop a reassuring kiss against the corner of the shorter man’s mouth.

The soldier can’t help appreciating how timid, how pliant his powerful REAPER is behaving, how soft his lips feel under thundering water, how vulnerable his vermillion gaze stares back through long, jet-black eyelashes covered in translucent droplets. 

“You’re beautiful,” Clover comments breathlessly. “Bet you’re not used to hearing it, but you deserve to be told more often that you’re beautiful. You’re being so good to me, so understanding, so gentle… You have no idea of the effect you have on me. How much I want you right now, like this, under my control...” 

Qrow pouts mischievously as he thrusts his hips into his partner’s, their growing erections touching briefly, sloppily, heatedly, a wave of pure desire rippling through the human’s body. 

“Less talking, more fucking,” he grumbles, and Clover’s more than happy to follow his orders as he takes both their manhoods in one hand, his other arm still occupied pinning Qrow’s wrists above their heads with such strength that the REAPER’s struggles are rendered futile, and red eyes can only admire the dripping bicep flexing right before them. 

As he starts pumping experimentally at first, Clover’s conscious of Qrow blinking and locking the bathroom door with his mind - the Atlas network controlling computer virus has its perks, and at least now they won’t have the unfortunate surprise of Ruby walking in on them after she returns from taking Zwei 2.0 for a stroll and visiting Yang at the hospital. They both chuckle at that, Clover admiring the way clear rivulets pour down the curve of his partner’s Adam’s apple before he dives in for another kiss, simultaneously picking up the pace of his pumping left hand. 

The Captain knows he won’t last long, not if Qrow’s responsive like this, panting and moaning at his every unpredictable action, every time he grips their erections with renewed strength, every time he suddenly slows down to an insistent snail’s pace, every time he strokes Qrow’s throbbing length with a precise, calloused thumb, every time he accelerates again, rubbing smooth skins together under irregularly tumbling water. The part-android’s squirms give Clover more access to deepen the kiss, to let his tongue conquer the darkness of Qrow’s mouth and claiming it as his. 

But the REAPER won’t let himself be conquered so easily, and at the slightest teasing pressure of teeth against the soldier’s tongue, they break the kiss clumsily to giggle heartily. The half-robot jumps at the occasion to bury his face into his lover’s strong shoulder, nibbling and biting at the ivory skin like a pecking bird while his agile hips jut his hard member into Clover’s hand. Each delightful impulse sends the veteran teetering closer and closer to the edge, his mechanical heartbeat pounding faster and faster, coming more and more  _ alive  _ in its metal shell. 

“You. Are. So. Beautiful,” the Captain exhales, pausing after each word to placate a kiss against the pale arc of Qrow’s neck. 

As a slender, yet strong alabaster leg wraps around Clover’s waist in response, pulling him closer, impossibly close, the human briefly loses his balance and his control over his pumping hand, exerting sudden strength that makes them both gasp in pain and pleasure. But it’s okay, because Qrow is there to catch him, to steady him, he doesn’t have to worry and nothing else matters, nothing else but the rhythmic pulsation of his hand wrapped around their manhoods, the flawed, human, oh-so-human rhythm of his fingers that carries them straight into their climax. 

After a few seconds of whitened weightlessness, Clover wonders how they’re even still standing just as the part-android slumps bonelessly into the burning embrace of his arms. The soldier’s muscular back slides awkwardly against the glass of the shower wall as he struggles to support his partner’s weight on the slippery floor, prompting Qrow to hold onto his sculptural chest for support. 

This time, Clover expects the REAPER’s fingers to touch his heart. That fake, shiny heart that he still abhors and resents inside his deepest nightmares, no matter what he tells himself during waking hours. That fake, broken heart that Qrow touches as naturally as any other part of him, without shame, without disgust, with the same giddy gentleness, with the same savage strength that accompanies each of his caresses, that says  _ I’m here, it’s going to be alright _ . 

He takes a deep breath. And another one. And another one. It’s going to be okay. 

“Help me clean up, will you?” the REAPER drawls, rubbing soap one-handed onto both their toned torsos while his other palm is still pressed to Clover’s heart. “You told me that was the whole point of taking showers, right?”

“Did I? I don’t remember, I got distracted by how amazing you are.”

“Clover, you… I...” 

“You really need to get used to compliments,” the soldier remarks, delicately cupping his partner’s face in his large hand and drinking in the priceless sight of a dumbfounded Qrow. 

“I’m sorry,” the crimson-eyed man mumbles. “And thank you.”

“Really? You’re thanking me? No deflecting? No throwing me into the way of closing doors?”

“Look, when I destroyed Tyrian and you gave me that little pep talk about how you believed in me, I was just too worried I’d… do you harm in my blind rage… and that I’d never be able to forgive myself for that… so I put distance between you and me… I’m sorry if I hurt you when throwing you.”

“Only my pride,” Clover smirks, inspecting the perfectly smooth skin of his plentiful biceps where the doors had closed around him. “You see, no scars on those arms you love to stare at.”

“Show-off,” Qrow teases back affectionately. 

“Before you threw me away, I was going to tell you I loved you, and I still-”

“Shhh,” wet fingers against his lips abruptly cut Clover off. “I realised. I was overcome by grief, not stupidity. And I wanted to keep you away from me, away from the mess I was, the mess I still am because I didn’t want you to suffer, and I still don’t want you to suffer because I… I...”

Vermillion irises are lost in thought, seemingly attempting to convey profound emotions, powerful as the resurgence of a deep subterranean river. To convey an apology, for pushing Clover away, for trying to forgive and not succeeding, not yet, because forgiving without forgetting is fucking hard, and Qrow cannot forget, must not forget because he’s already forgotten enough in his life. To convey a promise for the future, a promise to try, to fail, to stumble, to fall, for he knows Clover will be there to catch him if he falls, when he falls. He knows they’ll be there for each other when they stumble, and as long as they’re together they can always rise up again from ashes and dust.

“Clover… I think I love you too.”

**~THE END~**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What, I managed to finish a story with this many chapters?!? Not that it’s long by any stretch, but I’ve never managed to complete AND POST something of this length before and must confess I am pretty pleased with myself ^_^  
> End note to celebrate completion: this AU has been so many years in the planning, I think I first had the idea when I first watched Blade Runner 2049 on my best friend’s birthday. Yup, you read that right, this was long before Clover even first graced the screens and Fair Game/Lucky Charms became a thing. Initially, Ruby was going to be the title character, the REAPER IV, and the world was going to be a similar cyberpunk sci-fi mess with Weiss and Yang as bot fighters and Ruby having to investigate Blake, the Augments, and the SDC. But it didn’t have the whole aura of mystery about Ruby’s birth to it or anything that would have made her character particularly interesting in that universe, so I just put that idea aside in the metaphorically labeled ‘boring’ box at the back of my mind.  
> Then Fair Game came into the scene, and around the end of the volume I knew I wanted to write some AU stuff for this ship. This fic was going to be one of the AU’s, recycling some of my old ideas that seemed to work a lot better now that I put Qrow as the title character, with Clover to play off of him, and Ruby as the perhaps REAPER’s daughter/mystery box type character. Initially I planned this to be a two-shot (the first two chapters basically) that was basically half smut/PWP. And then some plot bunnies started to run around in my head while I wrote the two first chapters… and here we are, hehehe :)  
> About the ending - in my mind Weiss comes back as a REAPER and makes an appearance while they have a charity type event in the Atlas ballroom and Blake gives a political speech. Clover and Qrow just dance with each other and hope no one will notice them, which of course people do. Yang stands awkwardly at the side because the place brings back her PTSD and memories of Weiss, but that all changes when Weiss steps in dressed all in white with some shiny new robot parts. They have a little awkward teary-eyed reunion and then they end up dancing together… somehow. Yeah that was the spin-off I thought of to bring Weiss back to life because I still like her so much and she’s still my favourite in the whole show. But I didn’t want to include it in the main story because I wouldn’t be able to give this idea enough space to do it proper justice. If I feel like it I might actually write that spin-off/post credit scene thing, but not right now because I’m too busy and tired.   
> About busy and tired, I’ve yet to finish my Fair Game week prompts, despite the fact that FG week ended yesterday at least where I live. At some point later this week, I’ll get back to updating All The Help We Can Get. More importantly, I want to thank everyone who followed and commented on this fic, sometimes it takes me ages to respond but I just wanted to let you know that you are AMAZING and your messages always make my day so THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. Stay safe, warm, and keep moving forward xx

**Author's Note:**

> *memories that will inevitably be lost, like tears in the rain. ;)  
> So basically, this is like Blade Runner meet Ghost in the Shell meet Alita, with some Appleseed and Equilibrium thrown in for good measure. (I love Alita Battle Angel, it’s flawed, but I love it. Is that weird? Being in the RWBY fandom it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise…). Any resemblance is intentional and a more or less obvious Easter egg, this is a work of derivative fiction, please don’t sue. Thank you.  
> Next chapter in around a week’s time, estimated for next Monday/Tuesday. Stay safe and posted xx


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